And Love weighed down the drooping flowers
And murmured through the birdful bowers;
Its pulse was felt as sunbeams came
And scorched the garden as with flame,
And Love thrilled each young worshipper
Who there vowed life and soul to her.

Hers was the bounty but to be,
That which all hearts rejoiced to see—
The largesse hers, but ours the boon.
As when o'er earth the fair proud moon
Shines with her soft resplendent face,
A benediction and a grace
Enrich our lives; the liberal skies
Thus gladden with bright stars our eyes;
Thus choicest gifts are granted free;
Thus beauty is God's charity.

THE PASSION-PLAY AT BRIXLEGG.

ON a wet Sunday morning, in the month of
August, in the present year, we found ourselves
in a special train, going from Innsbruck to the
obscure little Tyrolese village of Brixlegg. The
train carried a very considerable number of
passengers, chiefly of the peasant class, and—with
about half a dozen exceptions—all natives of
the country.

A special train to Brixlegg! The announcement
would vastly have astonished any
traveller by one of the great through trains
traversing Innsbruck, who might have chanced
to inquire whither all those bearers of glistening
red, blue, brown, or green, umbrellas were
bound. Nevertheless, the special train was
going to Brixlegg, and it arrived there duly at
its appointed hour. The railway station lies
about twenty minutes' walk distant from the
village. The road from the former to the
latter was already ankle-deep in mud in many
places, and was becoming rapidly worse under
the tread of many heavily-shod feet, and the
influence of a soft, fine, unintermitting rain,
which had been falling since dawn, and which
continued to fall with small prospect of
cessation.

We trudged along in company with a large
number of peasants, who continued to arrive
from all directions. In addition to those
brought by the railway from Innsbruck, very
many came on foot, and more still in rustic
vehicles of various kinds: from the leather-
hooded einspänner of the well-to-do farmer,
down to the long narrow country carts,
carrying heavy loads of men, women, and children
of the humblest agricultural class, seated
on trusses of hay.

The village of Brixlegg is very beautifully
situated. Indeed it would be difficult to find
a spot which should be otherwise than beautiful
throughout the length and breadth of the
fair green land of Tyrol. But not of its
swelling hills, its distant snow-flecked crags, or
its rich smiling meadows, were we thinking as
we went along through the mire past the
picturesque cottages of Brixlegg's main street.
In common with the rest of the crowd we
pressed on eagerly towards our destination,
which soon appeared in sight at a turn of the
road. It was a large wooden building, like a
colossal barn. It stood on an irregular open
space at one extremity of the village. This open
space was, no doubt, in its normal condition
a pretty turf-covered common, green with
that emerald vividness of hue which gives
a peculiar charm to the aspect of every Tyrolese
valley. On this Sunday morning,
however, it had become a morass, a Slough of
Despond, through which we floundered
towards one of the numerous doors that gave
access to the wooden building aforesaid.
Arrived at the entrance, we paid the price of
admission—two florins for the best places—
and having climbed a rough wooden stair,
found ourselves in a little side balcony which
afforded a view of the whole interior of the
building.

The erection was entirely of wood, as has
been said. One glance sufficed to show the
spectator its nature and object. We were in a
theatre—a theatre rough in material, and somewhat
unconventional in form, but spacious, airy,
and admirably adapted for seeing and hearing
without difficulty or discomfort. There was
neither gallery nor "dress circle." The great
mass of the spectators were seated on wooden
benches on the floor of the theatre, which floor
sloped upward towards the back at an angle
sufficient to enable the persons on the hindmost
benches to command as full a view of the stage
as those in front. The stage was hidden, for
the present, by a painted canvas drop-scene,
which hung in a large proscenium rather wide
for its height. In front of it was an orchestra,
filled with players; and between them and the
foremost row of spectators were seated some
dozen singers, male and female, holding their
music in their hands.

The dimensions of the audience part of the
theatre were as follows: fifty-six feet broad,
thirty-six feet high, and one hundred and four
feet long. The whole of the available space was
filled by a closely-packed assemblage of persons
exclusively of the peasant class. Row after
row of weather-beaten rustic faces, surmounted
—men's and women's alike—by the tall pointed
Tyrolese hat, stretched back to the wall of the
building. The narrow space at each side left
for ingress and egress to and from the seats
was also crowded with spectators, who stood
patiently throughout the whole performance.
Truly a lengthy performance! What would
any sophisticated metropolitan population in
Europe say to a play which should commence
at nine o'clock A.M. and end at five in the
afternoon, allowing little more than one hour in
the middle for repose and refreshment?

And now, while the musicians in the
orchestra are playing a preliminary symphony in
a melancholy minor strain, let us take the
opportunity afforded us to inform the reader
what manner of spectacle it is that we are
about to witness, and to enter into sundry
explanatory details gathered from a little neatly-