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often occur when the ice breaks up, but there is little to be dreaded from either man or beast. I drove two thousand miles alone through the wildest parts of Russia in the height of the famine and the depth of winter. I carried no revolver or other arm of defence of any kind. There were only two occasions when, had I been armed, I might have been led to use any weapon in my possession; but, in either of these cases, I feel certain that recourse to fire-arms would have cost me my life.

"UNTO THE DESIRED HAVEN."

BY AMY PARKINSON.

THE night drew on apace; a wild, dark night,
A night of rushing wind and rising wave ;
Heaven's beacon lights all hid behind thick clouds.
And on the heaving bosom of the sea

A boat reeled to and fro, and vainly strove

To gain her rest. With straining at their oars
The weary mariners were well-nigh spent ;
And Jesus was not yet come unto them.
(For these were His disciples, and the Lord
Had tarried on the land.)

The night grew more

Obscure; more boist'rous roared the wind; the waves Surged higher still;-when lo, a Form of light

Dawned through the gloom! for, o'er the tossing sea, Walking serene as upon solid earth,

The Master came. And though the astonished men
For one brief moment grew wide-eyed with fear,
Not knowing Him, anon their hearts leapt up

In joyous welcome, for a sweet " Fear not
Fell on their ears; and, as they gladly made
Room in their midst for Him, the winds lay down;
The foaming sea grew calm; and straight the boat
Was at the land whereunto they were bound.

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Of deepest night! Ruler of raging blasts!

Calmer of storm-tossed seas!-Lighten this gloom;
Hush Thou the angry wailing of these winds;

And bid the waves so crouch before Thy feet,

That they the very dangers which I most

Do dread-shall form a road, for Thee, my King,
To come to me.

And, when Thou drawest nigh,

Clear Thou my vision; make it quick to know Thee; So fear may vanish in adoring joy.

Lord Jesus, come! for, at Thy blest command,

Swift shall my boat's keel touch the longed-for Land. TORONTO.

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in the fourth century. They were probably brought thence by returning palmers and pilgrims during the Crusades. In France, indeed, there was an order of pilgrims called the Confraternity of the Passion, from their representation of that subject. In England these religious plays seem to have been first exhibited at the universities, and were written in Latin. The monk

ish influence is very strongly marked on every page. They were afterward written in the common tongue, both in France and England, and are among the earliest relics of the vernacular literature of those countries.

This carly drama is of three sorts: the mysteries, the miracle plays, and the moralities. The first represented the principal subjects of the Christian faith, as the fall of man and the nativity, passion, and resurrection of Christ. The second exhibited the miracles of the saints and their astounding adventures. The third were, properly speaking, purely allegorical representations of vices and virtues. They sometimes set forth the parables of the New Testament and the historical parts of the Old; then, however, they became indistinguishable from the mysteries. The voluminous religious plays of Calderon and Lope de Vega partake largely of the alle gorical character of the moralities.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries these plays were performed in the churches for the instruction of the people; but the monks, finding that the exhibitions of the jugglers at the Easter revels drew the populace away from the churches, gave their plays a more attractive character and performed them in the open air. Reading was an art confined, of course, entirely to the clergy, and the ignorant masses could only vaguely comprehend the dull homilies they heard; but the public representation of the nativity, the passion, or the resurrection, at

the appropriate season of Christmas, Good Friday, or Easter, was easily understood and vividly remembered.* But these sacred representations soon became subject to abuse. Droll characters, comic scenes, and ridiculous speeches were introduced in order to excite mirth; and a flippant and irreverent treatment of the most sublime themes became a prevailing vice. Many of the clerical performers degraded themselves to the level of buffoons, and the miracle plays, originally intended to communicate religious instruction, frequently degenerated into broad and indecent farce. The lower clergy adopted this vehicle for the abuse of their superiors, and the rude populace found in them both subjects for burlesque and caricature. Thus the most sacred associations of religion became degraded into objects of vulgar mirth. The language of even the female charactersgenerally represented by boys, however-was frequently exceedingly coarse, and gives us a low opinion of the manners of the age. The devils, or "tormentours," as they were called, were the clowns of the play, and caused infinite merriment by their rude jokes and buffoonery.

The stage was divided into three parts, to represent heaven, earth, and hell; and very intricate and ingenious machinery was often employed to produce theatrical effects. These stages were frequently on wheels, so that they might be drawn about. The gross ideas of the age

A passion play is still represented every ten years at Oberammergau, in Bavaria, in fulfilment of a vow made on the cessation of a pestilence in A.D. 1633. As many as five hundred peasant performers take part, and the spectacle is witnessed by thousands of visitors from all parts of Bavaria and Tyrol and from more distant places. The rehearsal lasts several days and, like the Greek drama, is performed in the open air. It partakes of a highly religious character, and the representatives of sacred persons are selected for their piety of life and are set apart by prayer. Similar plays, but of inferior merit, are also performed in the villages around Innspruck.

concerning the material torments of the damned were faithfully delineated. The monks, doubtless, thought a very salutary lesson was inculcated when a man who refused to pay bis tithes or a woman who adulterated her ale or sold too scanty measure was dragged off forcibly to hell-mouth, from which belched fire and smoke. The devils wore flamecoloured and grotesque clothing and carried clubs of buckram stuffed with sawdust, with which they vigorously belaboured each other and the crowd. In one play Satan and a "nigromancer" dance, when the latter is suddenly tripped up and carried off bodily. Yet the sign of the cross or the invocation of the Virgin or the saints immediately discomfits them; and of holy water they have a mortal terror. In the "Nativity Play" they roar horribly when Christ is born and make a great noise under the stage. The various parts, originally performed by monks, came, in course of time, to be enacted by companies of citizens. Different crafts and guilds vied with each other in the representation of the plays allotted them. The rivalry between the worshipful tanners, chandlers, vinters, mercers, bowyers, skinners, and weavers was keen and exciting.*

When we consider how humble were the talents employed, the majestic sweep and the sublime compass of these plays astonish us. They comprehend the entire drama of time, from the creation of the world to the day of doom. Nay, the daring imagination of the monkish writers went back beyond the dawn of time to the counsels of eternity and, scaling the battlements of heaven, laid bare the secrets of the

*In the book of accounts of these plays some strange charges are recorded; for example, "Item payed for mending hellmouth. ij d.; for keeping fire at ditto, iiij d.; for settying the world on fire, j d. ; ij worms of conscience, iij s.; whyte or saved sowles, and ij blake or dampnyed sowles, v s. ; baryll for ye earthquakes, ijs. ;" etc.

skies. They shrank not from exploring with unfaltering step the regions of the damned, and depicted with Dantean vigour and minuteness the tortures of the lost. They pierced the mysteries of the future and revealed the awful scenes of the last judgment and the final consummation of all things. In recording in his lofty numbers the story of the fall of man and loss of paradise, how far soever he may have surpassed his predecessors, the sightless bard of English poesy, whose inner vision seemed more clear for that the outer ray was quenched forever, could hardly be said to have pursued

Things unattempted yet, in prose or rhyme. For not only in the miracle plays and mysteries, but also in the still older legendary poem of Cædmon, the Saxon monk, is the same story related with wondrous vigour and sublimity.

The literary execution of these plays, as might be expected, is very imperfect. The most absurd anachronisms and solecisms perpetually occur. The Old Testament characters repeatedly swear-a habit to which they are generally addicted— by "Sanct Peter and Sanct Poule," by "Mahoun and the Sybill." Titles are strangely modernized. The "knights" who crucify our Lord speak of "Sir Pylate" and "Bishop Caiaphas." The devils talk of "Sir Satan" and "Lord Lucifer." The interlocutors in the play quote from "Gregory," "Austyne,' Austyne," and "Sir Goldenmouth." The geography is inextricably confused. The local topography of England is transferred to the fields of Palestine; and London and Paris are familiarly referred to by the shepherds of Bethlehem.

The awful scenes of the passion are most painfully realized, and are delineated with all the force and breadth of Rubens' sublime painting. The ribaldry and scurrile jests of the rude soldiery throw into stronger

contrast the dread terrors of the scene. The monkish authors do not scruple to heighten the dramatic interest by the introduction of legendary stories, stories, often absurdly, sometimes with wonderfully picturesque effect. English and Latin are strangely intermingled, according to the necessities of the rhyme or rhythm.

The writers manifest a sublime disdain of the servile rules of syntax and prosody, and each spells as seems right in his own eyes. The same word will occur in two or three different forms on the same page. The rhymes are frequently so execrable that in some manuscripts and printed copies brackets are used to indicate the rhyming couplets. This was, of course, the very childhood of dramatic art, and it was therefore extremely infantile in its expression; it nevertheless gave token, like the infant Hercules, of a power of grappling with difficulties which was an augury of the glorious strength it was afterward to manifest.

With majestic sweep of thought the drama of the ages is enacted in these plays. All the converging lines of providence and prophecy centre in the cross of Christ; and from it streams the light that irradiates the endless vista of the future. Heaven itself seems open, and the vision of the great white throne and the procession of the palm-crowned, white-robed multitudes pass before us. We hear the "sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies," the choiring of the cherubim and seraphim, and the song of the redeemed in the presence of God. Anon the scene is darkened by the shades of endless gloom, is larid with the glare of quenchless fire, and awful with the ceaseless wailing of the lost.

Compared with these lofty themes the sublimest tragedies of Greece or Rome and their noblest epics pale into "faded splendour wan." What

parallel can be drawn between the petty conflict around the walls of Troy, or the wanderings of Ulysses, or the building of a Latin town, and the fall of man, the redemption of the world, and the Judgment Day? What terror of Eschylus or Sophocles can shake the soul like the record of the drowning of the world by water or the vision of its destruction by fire? What pathos of Euripides can melt the heart like the tender story of the nativity or the awful tragedy of the cross? The ignorant populace of a petty burgh and the boorish inhabitants of the surrounding country, in that ultimate dim Thule of the West, where such plays were enacted, had brought before their minds, and doubtless often deeply impressed upon their hearts, holier lessons and sublimer truths than Plato wrote or Pindar sung, or than were ever taught by sage or seer in Stoa of the temples or grove of the Academy.

And these were no mere poet's fancies. They were solemn realities and eternal verities to their unlettered hearers. The Judgment Day, whose terrors they beheld portrayed, they believed to be at hand-at the very door. Through the purifying flames they felt that they themselves must pass, till the foul crimes done in their "6 days of nature," were "burned and purged away." Though there may have been little in this homely drama to refine the manners or to cultivate the taste, there was much to elevate and strengthen the character and to project the acts of every day upon the solemn background of eternity. ground of eternity. To such Christian teachings as these do we owe the grave and God-fearing AngloSaxon manhood of the heroic past. The outcome of such sacred influences may be seen in every great work of our literature, in every noble act of our history-in "Hamlet," Lear," "Macbeth"; in Milton, Bunyan, Burns; in Cromwell and Hampden, in Sydney and Vane; in the deeds

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