Now we are at the town's-end, what say you
now? " By degrees there were introduced
improvements upon these rude methods. Beds
were brought in to represent bed-chambers;
candles were used to betoken night-time;
pictures, giving some help to the understanding of
the piece, were hung up, at first without being
removed from first to last, afterwards being
changed to suit the progress of the story.

The poetry of a good play was made more
perfect by this lack of scenery. Had it been
necessary for Shakespeare to write plays whose
every circumstance was to be represented to the
eye, he would have had to restrict himself to
incidents that could be set forth economically,
and the exquisite play of his fancy must have
been grievously fettered. Writing only for
the ear, he could give his imagination boundless
liberty, and conjure up glorious visions, which
our own generation has been almost the first to
see interpreted into stage shows. Again, the
scene-painting to the ear fills his plays with
delicious poetical suggestions of that which the
poet now leaves to the paint-pot.

But the Shakespearean playhouse was not
entirely without appurtenances, or contrivances
for heightening effect. Here is a stage direction
from Greene's Alphonsus: " Exit Venus;
or, if you can conveniently, let a chain come down
from the top of the stage, and draw her up."
From an old inventory, dated 1598, a few
entries may be extracted, showing as they do
the sort of properties then common in a respectable
theatre. " Item: one rock, one cage, one
tomb, one hell-mouth. Item: eight lances, one
pair of stairs for Phaeton [to ascend to heaven
by]. Item: one golden fleece, two rackets, one
bay-tree. Item: one wooden canopy, old
Mahomet's head. Item: Neptune's fork and
garland. Item: three timbrels, one dragon in
Faustus. Item: one lion, two lions' heads,
one great horse with his legs, one sackbut.
Item: one frame for the beheading in Black
John. Item: one caldron for the Jew. Item:
four Herod's coats, three soldiers' coats, and one
green gown for Marian. Item: Eve's bodice,
one pendant trusser, and three dons' hats.
Item: one ghost's suit, and one ghost's bodice."

Theatre properties just now are as grotesquely
heterogeneous, but a thousand times
more costly and elaborate. Of Shakespeare's
playhouses, the Blackfriars stood for a long while,
till it was fairly rotten; but the Globe was
very short-lived. In 1613, while King Henry
the Eighth was being performed in it, a lighted
match fell upon the straw-covered floor. The
flames rapidly spread to the wooden building,
and it was soon burned to ashes.

NOTHING LIKE RUSSIA LEATHER.

I am traveller for a firm which sells a good
deal of agricultural machinery; and we are very
busy in Southern Russia just now; for either
the fine estates of the local landowners must be
thrown for some years entirely out of cultivation,
or machines must supply the place of hand-
labour, which is not to be had at any price. The
population of the fertile though unlovely
provinces of the South is very scanty. The fierce
wars which have desolated them for centuries
have left an awful brand upon them.
Notwithstanding the wealth of the soil the eye of
the wayfarer aches with the weird prospect of
endless desolation. They are peopled with the
wild fancies and legends of the past; and are
still little changed from what they were in the
times when they sent forth their barbaric hordes
clad in sheepskin and greased with tallow, to
strike dismay into the effeminate legions of
the Byzantine Emperors. For hundreds of
versts, we may hurry over their windy steppes,
and meet nothing but small-eyed, wiry little
men, mounted on yeo-necked galloways, with
uncombed hair of rusty brown floating down their
backs: or now and then a string of carts, each
containing little more than a wheelbarrow would,
slowly and toilsomely bearing along, over almost
impassable roads, the food of the civilised world
to the distant seaports, where half of it arrives
spoiled and unfit for use. Wheat might be sold
in London at twenty shillings a quarter if there
were railways in the south of Russia, so true is
it that the civilization and prosperity of other
countries are to the advantage of our own.
Perhaps, in the course of a long day's journey also,
a few spare-bearded men may be seen moving
about, through many hardships and some
dangers, on an errand of no small importance to
themselves or to us. They are still dressed in
the oldest garment known among men—the long
Eastern robe; but it is here made of cloth, and
is the distinctive dress of the Jews in Russia.
These men, hawk-eyed, sharp featured, ringleted,
garrulous, dirty, ready-witted, never at a loss
under any possible circumstances, are corn-
dealers; and they wander about from one estate
to the other, buying up produce in corn and
maize, tallow and oil-seed, at vile prices, because
the helpless producers dread the risk of sending
them to market.

A few other characteristic features may be
added at rare intervals to the landscape. Now
and then, a few camels remind one of the East.
A long string of springless carriages carry the
family of some Russian noble, with all his household
gods—including a large metallic image of
the Virgin, terrible to the knees—and provision
for every accident. He is off to join the crowd
of his countrymen eager for foreign travel.
There, stand his carriages, drawn up disabled
by the roadside, having been just pulled out of a
neigbouring quagmire by oxen, and having been
broken in the process. In summer, too, clouds
of locusts, darkening the sun and stretching
farther than the eye can see, cover the roads and fly
headlong against the traveller, and attest the
absence of any settled population. The few
post-houses, long stages apart, often stand quite
alone—not a village, not a tree, near them.

The serfs, hitherto cooped up upon the estates
of their owners, have not yet been allowed to
scatter themselves, but remain in their old quarters,
sulky, discontented, ignorant of their position