Dr. Stiggins:
nouncements of him whom our sturdy ancestors called "the Man of Sin"? You have read how our good old Puritan forefathers abolished the semi-Pagan, semi-Popish, wholly superstitious observance of Christmas, how good men, even in our day, have refused to allow the accursed thing, plum pudding, to enter their doors, you know what an example of serious household discipline the great Milton set to the world, how the unutterable infamy of pleasure on the Sabbath was prohibited, how the plague-spot of the theatre was stamped out by those stout Commonwealth's men. And, I ask, was all this done that Englishmen and Protestants should be regaled with the doings of Cardinals, with the movements of a person calling himself Merry del Val? Merry del Val! What a name for a professing Christian! There is offence in the very sound of it; it seems to suggest to the densest ear the noise of the unholy revelries of the Vatican, surpassing the worst orgies of Nero and Tiberius; it reminds
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