there into children, and charged them, on their fealty to act only as such. "I absolve them all from wisdom," he said; "I bid them be just wise enough to make fools of themselves, and do decree that none shall sit apart in pride and eke in self-sufficiency to laugh at others"; and then the fun commenced.
Off in stately Whitehall, in the palace of the boy king, her brother, the revels were grander and showier; but to the young Elizabeth, not yet skilled in all the stiffness of the royal court, the Yule-tide feast at Hatfield House brought pleasure enough; and so, seated at her holly-trimmed virginal—that great-great-grandfather of the piano of to-day,—she, whose rare skill as a musician has come down to us, would—when wearied with her "prankes and japes"—"tap through" some fitting Christmas carol, or that older lay of the Yule-tide "Mumming":
To shorten winter's sadness see where the folks with gladness Disguised, are all a-coming, right wantonly a-mumming,
Fa-la!
"Whilst youthful sports are lasting, to feasting turn our fasting:
With revels and with wassails make grief and care our vassals,
Fa-la!"
The Yule-log had been noisily dragged in "to the firing," and as the big sparks raced up the wide chimney, the boar's head and the tankard of sack,
