of a wolf; a third, still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed the beard and horns of a venerable he-goat.  There was the likeness of a bear erect, brute in all but his hind legs, which were adorned with pink silk stockings.  And here, again, almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of the dark forest, lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of a human hand and as ready for the dance as any in that circle.  His inferior nature rose halfway to meet his companions as they stooped.  Other faces wore the similitude of man or woman, but distorted or extravagant, with red noses pendulous before their mouths, which seemed of awful depth and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit of laughter.  Here might be seen the salvage man—­well known in heraldry—­hairy as a baboon and girdled with green leaves.  By his side—­a nobler figure, but still a counterfeit—­appeared an Indian hunter with feathery crest and wampum-belt.  Many of this strange company wore foolscaps and had little bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a silvery sound responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits.  Some youths and maidens were of soberer garb, yet well maintained their places in the irregular throng by the expression of wild revelry upon their features.

Such were the colonists of Merry Mount as they stood in the broad smile of sunset round their venerated Maypole.  Had a wanderer bewildered in the melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the change; but a band of Puritans who watched the scene, invisible themselves, compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.

Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple-and-golden cloud.  One was a youth in glistening apparel with a scarf of the rainbow pattern crosswise on his breast.  His right hand held a gilded staff—­the ensign of high dignity among the revellers—­and his left grasped the slender fingers of a fair maiden not less gayly decorated than himself.  Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy curls of each, and were scattered round their feet or had sprung up spontaneously there.  Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the Maypole that its boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an English priest, canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in heathen fashion, and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves.  By the riot of his rolling eye and the pagan decorations of his holy garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, and the very Comus of the crew.