The Reformation affected the Order of the Garter, as it did all our other institutions, and though the alterations made by Edward VI. were speedily repealed in the next reign, they are interesting, as showing the thorough change which had come over English religious feeling. The worship of saints was a feature of the expiring faith. St. George was therefore no longer to be the patron of the Order, "lest the honour which is due to God, the Creator of all things, might seem to be given to any creature." The Order being a secular institution only, needed no Prelate; his office was accordingly abolished. The solemn services of St. George's Chapel were discontinued, and along with them the ceremonials of feasts and installations fell into disuse. All this was again altered in the reactionary times of Philip and Mary; but when the Reformers came again into power, they were contented to let things remain as they were, trusting to the Sovereign to interpret the statutes in accordance with the reformed faith. Elizabeth was by no means blind to the importance of the Garter as an engine of statecraft-indeed, she very much improved upon her father's practice in the use made of it. During the last fifteen years of her reign she secured the fidelity of many of her nobility by refusing, even when the formalities of election by the Chapter of Knights had been observed, to complete it, and thus holding the honour in suspense over the expectant's head as a pledge of his loyalty. To do this she had recourse to manoeuvres which must have severely taxed the gallantry of the Knights-expectant and the patience and selfrespect of the Order. She would often go through all the forms of election, and then absolutely refuse to declare the result. Once she would she said—have been happy to make the declaration, but unfortunately she had lost the lists of votes; on another occasion she actually went to the chapel in her robes to proceed to an election, but having come without her mantle, nothing could be done, and the Chapter had to be dismissed. On this smaller stage Elizabeth seems to have played the same part which on the wider one of politics so perplexed her enemies and troubled her friends. With more than a man's clearness of head and determination, she had the art to feign. an indecision and shallowness which would not have been tolerated in a man, but which in a woman and a queen must be put up with and made the best of. The singular success with which she played her most difficult part reconciles us to the arts by which she played off her position as an unmarried woman against the cleverness and power of the enemies by whom she was surrounded.

Under the Stuart dynasty the Order experienced very little change; but the free election of Companions and even the formalities of the

Chapter were rapidly falling into disuse. The Sovereign was gradually absorbing the whole power of the Knights, which he used and dispensed like other patronage. "Steenie" was appointed hurriedly one morning by James I., before starting for Newmarket, and Charles I. claimed the absolute right of nominating foreigners to the election of the Chapter.

But he was not the less proud of the dignity of the Order, for he endowed it with £1,200 a year, charged on the customs of London, and instituted the Star or Cross for the daily wear of the Knights, an emblem which was impressed on the silver coinage of 1662 by his son. Charles II. did not, however, always use such dignified means of showing his fondness for the insignia of the Order. The robes were intended for wear at solemn ceremonials only, but nothing would satisfy Charles on the occasion of the Feast in 1667, held that year at Whitehall, but he must wear his Garter robes all day. Some of the Companions were to be seen in them that evening in the park; while two of them, Lord Oxford and the Duke of Monmouth, so far forgot their dignity as to appear thus habited in the same fashionable resort in a hackney coach. During Charles's exile at the beginning of his reign, he conferred the Order on his nephew, William of Nassau, the future King of England, then but three years old-the youngest Companion that has ever been elected. Cromwell during his protectorate abstained from meddling with the Order, and the only event which signalised the Restoration was the refusal of the great Lord Chancellor Clarendon to accept it.

We may pass over a century to the reign of George III., when the Order assumed the form and customs which regulate it at the present day. Doubtless the statutes had been growing more and more obsolete every year, but in 1771 the infringement of an apparently unimportant rule was commented on by "Junius," the great public critic of those days. The statutes of Henry VIII. require the presence of six Knights to form a Chapter, but at the election of Lord Gower, then President of the Council, only four Companions were present, which "Junius" says was “a violation of the statutes, which have been religiously respected and observed through so many ages." But the statutes were destined to receive a much more serious blow to their authority than this. Through every change which in the course of four hundred years had befallen the Order, the number of Knights never exceeded the original number of twenty-five. Now King George III. was blessed with seven sons, and it was thought that the Garter would become too much of a family party if all seven of the Royal Princes were admitted into the original twenty-five stalls. It was therefore ordered in 1786 that Princes of the Blood should not be reckoned among the twenty-five ordinary Knights.

The exclusiveness of the Order having been once relaxed, further widening of its portals soon followed. The privileges accorded to the sons of George III. were extended to all descendants of George II. in 1805. The conclusion of the European war in 1813 gave occasion for extending to foreign princes the privileges of the English royal family, but at their election, at which the Emperor Alexander of Russia assisted-the only foreign prince that had taken part in the business of the Order since Francis I. sat in a Chapter held by Henry VIII. on the Field of Cloth of Gold-the ceremony of voting was superseded by the Sovereign's declaration of election. And this rule has been followed ever since in the case of foreign princes. Almost all the ancient ceremonial disappeared under the liberal use of royal warrants of dispensation from observance of the statutes. These appear first to have been used to escape the ceremony of installation, which the troubles of the seventeenth century had rendered impossible, and the taste of the eighteenth objected to. But they have been used also in two or three exceptional cases to supersede the ordinary method of election of Knights. Thus in 1814 Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh were made extra Knights of the Garter by warrant; the privilege hitherto accorded to the Blood Royal and foreign princes was extended to them as there were no vacancies in the twenty-five stalls assignable to ordinary Englishmen. Care, however, was taken not to augment permanently the number of Knights, as an additional statute was made at that time that there should be no further election of English Knights until the number then raised to twenty-seven should fall to the statutable limit of twenty-five. Lord Grey's election by warrant as an extra Knight in 1831 is the only other instance in which the number of the Black Prince's English Companions has been exceeded.

We have now brought this sketch of the history of the Order of the Garter to our own day, when, like all other Crown patronage, its honours are really at the disposal of the Prime Minister, who being for the most part a commoner, is himself incapable of admission to the Order. This is one of the lesser of those anomalies by which the maintenance of ancient forms instinct with modern spirit is indicated in English public life. The romantic fancy of a mediæval king, whose subjects and Court and method of rule have scarcely a point in common with modern England; with little left of its original constitution but its name and the venerable building erected for earliest use, is yet so thoroughly English in its character, so flexible, so easily adaptable to modern ideas and methods of administration, that it survives with undiminished honour as the highest object of an Englishman's ambition.

THEATRICALS IN IRELAND.

PHILOSOPHIC rhetorician, in suggesting advice regarding the beginning of an article on any subject, has given it as his opinion that the writer should begin with a statement of fact. Following the implied rule, I shall commence by a proposition nearly logical in its form, though the diction employed rarely comes before the eye of the scholastic disputant, "Paddy is very fond of the play." There are many reasons obvious when they are suggested-why this should be the case. The romantic traditions of their country have so influenced the naturally emotional character of the Irish people as to make them strive after the ideal rather than the real, whilst the religion of the majority has accustomed them to elaborate and ornate spectacles. The appeals of pity and the influence of terror have been made familiar to the people by the sorrowful traditions of their race; it is needless to insist on the effect which the representation of anything comic invariably makes on the mind of an Irishman. Whilst, however, the Irish people love the drama, the tutelary muse is 'but indifferently worshipped in the Emerald Isle. Indeed, in some parts of the country no temple has yet been erected to her honour, and when special services are organised in her praise they are frequently held in unhallowed places, in which she must feel reluctant to find a local habitation, even for the time specified in the canons of dramatic unity.

The purpose of this brief article is to describe the aspect of theatrical life in Ireland, and also to indicate the circumstances which give hope that the sock and buskin will be honoured more fittingly in the future in the sister island than during the chequered period of Ireland's history which has elapsed since the union of that country with Great Britain.

The reader must not apprehend that I am about to sketch the history of the Irish stage from a period anterior to the time of Thespis, although, of course, the ancestors of the Irish were before every other people in the world in more senses than one, especially in acting. My intention is merely to glance at that part of its records which tells of the vicissitudes of theatrical speculation during the reign of her present gracious Majesty.

The consideration which strikes the mind of the reader most strongly in perusing the history of the Dublin stage is, that political movements have done more than anything else to impede its progress. The agitation initiated by O'Connell for the Repeal of the Union at the end of the reign of William IV. became more and more turbid during the earlier years of the reign of Queen Victoria, when the Loyal National Repeal Association - the object of which is implied in its designation-was founded. From the year 1840 the Theatre Royal became the arena in which members of rival factions denoted their political sympathies by shouts for "Repale" or volleys of Kentish fire. But the prospects of the drama suffered; for those who used to fill the pit and galleries—the paying parts of "the house "found more congenial attractions in the debates of Conciliation Hall. The manager of this theatre, struggling bravely against a strong tide of adversity, made noble efforts to conciliate fortune in the cause he loved sincerely and promoted generously. His enterprise at this portion of his professional career, 1838-1841, will be appreciated when it is stated that Mr. Balfe, previously famous in London as a composer and a singer, made his first professional appearance in his native land in the opera of "La Sonnambula;" that Tyrone Power roused the enthusiastic mirth of his countrymen by his incomparabie impersonations of Pierce O'Hara in "The Irish Attorney," and of O'Callaghan in "His Last Legs;" and that Mr. Charles Kean and Mrs. Charles Kean-then Miss Ellen Tree-received the popular recognition due to their artistic delineation of dramatic characters. It was at that time also that Van Amburgh received £900 for eighteen representations of his lion-taming entertainment-that Grisi and Tamburini, Lablache and Mario, Benedict and Jullien, Braham and Thalberg, arrested the attention of lovers of music amongst the Irish people, that Charles Mathews and Mr. Compton illustrated two of the highest phases of comedy; that Mr. and Mrs. Keeley and Mr. Paul Bedford tested Hibernian morals in Mr. Buckstone's drama of "Jack Sheppard," and Mr. Macready interpreted some of the grandest creations of "the noblest dramatist of them all." Gradually the public excitement increased until it reached its climax when O'Connell, his eldest son, and seven others were prosecuted in the November of 1843. The intensity of interest was renewed when the House of Lords reversed the verdict found against the

traversers.

The influence of politics on the stage may be further indicated by the fact that whilst O'Connell was imprisoned in the Richmond