their heads!_"

* * * * *


_Party Spirit._--Fuller did not think party madness; for, he says
such men as will side with neither party "hope, though the great vessel
of the state be wrecked, in a private fly-boat of neutrality, to waft
their own private adventure safe to the shore. But who ever saw dancers
on ropes so equally poise themselves, that at last they fall not down
and break their necks?"

* * * * *


_A Court Jester._--Fuller thus describes one: "Of this fellow, his
body, downwards, was a fool, his head a knave, who did carefully note,
and cunningly vent, by the privileges of his coat, many state-passages,
uttering them, in a _wary twilight_, betwixt sport and earnest."

* * * * *


_An Excellent Courtier._--Sir Walter Raleigh speaks of Queen
Elizabeth, when sixty years of age, "riding like Alexander, hunting like
Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about
her pure cheeks like a nymph,--sometime sitting in the shade like a
goddess, sometime singing like an angell, sometime playing like
Orpheus."