reverend gentleman standing at the "wing,"
book in band, or moving about behind the
scenes; active, earnest, evidently the life and
soul of the whole.

In the concluding scenes of the drama no
detail was spared. The insulting gibes, the brutal
buffets, the crown of thorns, the cruel blood-
drinking lash, all were represented. One of
the most powerfully affecting scenes, without
being horrible, was the parting of the Virgin
Mary from her Son. Another pathetic point
was when the Lord, sinking under the cross on
his way to Calvary, was met by women of
Jerusalem, with their little children, who knelt and
wept compassionately; and when he told them
not to weep for him but for themselves and
their little ones, and uttered the heart-rending
apostrophe, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that
killest the prophets and stonest them which
are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye
would not! Behold, your house is left unto
you desolate."

The last supper was a strikingly successful
embodiment of the great picture by Leonardo
da Vinci. The crucifixion on Golgotha, was
an extraordinary and harrowing spectacle.
Consider it! At this date of the world's history,
and after the flow of eighteen hundred years,
that tragedy of tragedies is acted in mimic
show, upon a public stage, by men whose
forefathers in Herod's time were skin-clad
savages, dimly afraid of distant mighty Rome,
as a fierce wild brute dimly fears the human
mind that wields the conquering whip! Now
Rome, that distant Rome, sends no more
glittering cohorts into Northern wilds. The
times are changed. Instead of mailed centurion,
stark and stern, there keeps watch a mild
old gentleman in sombre simple garb, holding a
book, and teaching little children—and yet
ruling rugged men with a more absolute and
searching tyranny than any ever used by
laurelled Caesar! A wailing mournful chorus
preceded the scene of death. The band of angels
appeared with black draperies, and the speaker
solemnly conjured the spectators to remember
that for them and for their sins this agony had
fallen on the Sinless One. The curtain rose
amid breathless silence, broken only by the
horrible clink of hammers. The two thieves
already appeared hanging aloft, each on his
fatal tree. In the centre, men were busied
about a prostrate form. Always sounded that
horrible clink of hammers. A group of women
shrouded their weeping faces, shuddering.
Roman soldiers, lance in hand, kept back the
many-coloured crowd. In the foreground stood
the Jewish Priest, exultant and unrelenting.
Slowly and noiselessly, men upreared the
central cross until it stood erect, bearing a figure
which appeared like some colossal mediæval
carving on a crucifix; so still was it, so wan, so
ivory-pale, with its black crown of thorns and
strip of snowy drapery, and the cruel crimson
wounds in its hands and feet. Precisely as the
Evangelists have related it, the awful scene
was presented, point for point, before our eyes.
No particular was omitted. Throughout the
whole drama, we discovered only one variation
from the narrative of the New Testament.
This was the incident of St. Veronica,
attired as a noble Roman lady, meeting Jesus
on his way to Calvary and wiping his brow with
her handkerchief, which forthwith received the
impression of the Divine face. This favourite
legend of the Romish Church was received
with manifest satisfaction. But it was the
only instance in which any mere tradition of
the church was introduced. The descent from
the Cross was one of the most extraordinary
pieces of mimic show imaginable. The death
in every line and muscle of the drooping form,
the pathetic helplessness with which the body
hung in the white cloth they wrapped around
it to lower it to the ground, the placid stillness
of the colourless face lying thorn-crowned across
the knees of Mary Mother who received her son
at the foot of the cross, all were absolutely
perfect. No artist ever conceived or painted a
dead Christ with more absolute accuracy of
physical detail, or a more noble melancholy
sweetness of spiritual expression, than we saw
presented bodily before our eyes in the Passion-
Play at Brixlegg. And the man who achieved
this representation was a hard-handed tiller of
the soil. We saw him afterwards in his every-
day garb, and spoke to him. He was changed
and made coarser by the absence of the flowing
hair and beard he had assumed for the drama;
but there were the dreamy soft eyes and the
broad pure-looking brow. We asked him if he
were not tired. He had gone through a tiring
task, even as a mere effort of physical
endurance. But there had been more in the
performance than that. There had been evident
emotion, chastened and subdued by unfaltering
dignity. He answered in few words and in a
faint and weary voice. He looked like one who
had passed through severe mental suffering.
This appearance, however, was, we felt
convinced, the natural and unconscious expression
of his face at all times.

Of the other characters, the most remarkable
was Judas. It is to be noted, moreover,
that Judas was the only one of the performers
who received any public mark of approbation.
He was loudly applauded on several occasions,
and greeted with cries of "bravo!" It is not
difficult to account for Judas alone being so
received. A sense of reverence and decorum
would obviously check any such demonstration
towards the more sacred personages of the
drama. To Judas no devout veneration was
due. He was no saint, no apostle; simply a
bad traitorous man; greedy and false and
violent. The actor portrayed these qualities with
considerable vividness and skill. Him, therefore,
as a mere human and earthly personage,
we may venture to applaud! Judas's death
was a highly startling exhibition. After a
paroxysm of raving remorse, he rushed to a
tree in the centre of the stage, drew a cord