short, black beard,-all bore the most strange and startling resemblance to the heads of the Saviour as represented by the early Italian painters. "There was something to my mind almost fearful in this resemblance, and Tobias Flunger seemed to act and speak like one filled with a mysterious awe. If this be an act of worship in him, this personation of our Lord, what will be its effect upon him in after-life? There was a something so strange, so unspeakably melancholy in his emaciated countenance, that I found my imagination soon busily speculating upon the true reading of its expression. "At the door we were also met by his wife and little daughter, themselves peasants in appearance, but cheerful and kind in their welcome, as if we had been old friends. The whole cottage was in harmony with its inhabitants, bright, cheerful, and filled with traces of a simple, pious, beautiful existence. We were taken into a little room, half chamber, half study; upon the walls were several well-chosen engravings, after Hess and Overbeck; and oldfashioned cabinet, fronted with glass, contained various quaint drinking-glasses and exquisite specimens of carving in wood, an art greatly practised in the village. On one side of the cabinet hung a violin, and above it and another cabinet were arranged casts of hands and feet. On noticing these things to the wife, she said that her husband was a carver in wood by profession, and had brought these with him from Munich to assist him in his art. "He is a great carver of crucifixes and Madonnas,' she continued: you must see his work.' He was an artist, then, this Tobias Flunger, with his grave, sad countenance, his air of superiority; yes, much was now explained. And no doubt his artist-feeling had been brought into operation for the benefit of the MiraclePlay, in the same manner that the schoolmaster of Ober-Ammergau had taxed his musical skill for the production of the music. "It was now seven o'clock; and as yet it wanted an hour till the commencement of the play, our kind artistic host, with that strange, melancholy, awe-inspiring countenance of his, insisted upon accompanying us through the village, and showing us specimens of the woodcarving. There was yet plenty of time,' he said, for him to prepare the play.' "At the sound of a small cannon, the motley crowd hastened towards the theatre, which was a large, unsightly, wooden enclosure, erected on a broad green meadow, within a stone's throw of the village. A few poplars growing on either side of the enclosure, no doubt, mark from one ten years to another, the precise spot. The brightly-painted pediment of the proscenium rose above the rude wooden fence; crowds of people already, thronged the hastily-crowded flights of steps leading to the different entrances. A few moments more, and we are seated in the boxes precisely opposite the front of the stage. "With the first feeble notes from the orchestra, and very feeble at first they were, a dead silerce sunk down upon the assembled multitude; as people say, you might have heard a pin drop.' All was breathless expectation. And soon, beneath the blue dome of heaven, and with God's sunlight showering down upon them, a fantastic vision passed across the stage; their white tunics glanced in the light, their crimson, violet, and azure mantles swept the ground, their plumed head-dresses waved in the breeze; they looked like some strange flight of fabulous birds. This was the chorus, attired to represent angels. Like the antique chorus, they sang the argument of the play. With waving hands and solemn music. their united voices pealed forth words of blessing, of Peace on earth, and good will towards men: they sang of God's infinite love in sending among men His blessed Son: and their voices rose towards heaven, and echoed among the hills. And whilst they thus sang, our hearts were strangely touched, and our eyes wandered away from those singular peasant angels and their peasant audience, up to the deep, cloudless blue sky above their heads: you heard the rustle of green trees around you, and caught glimpses of mountains, and all seemed a strange, fantastical, poetical dream. "But now the chorus retired, and the curtain slowly rose. There is a tread of feet, a hum of voices, a crowd approaches, children shout, wave palm-branches, and scatter flowers. In the centre of the multitude on the stage, riding upon an ass, sits a majestic figure clothed in a long violet-coloured robe, the heavy folds of a crimson mantle falling around him. His hands are laid across his breast; his face is meekly raised towards heaven, with an adoring love. Behind solemnly follows a group of grave men, staves in their hands, ample drapery sweeping the ground; you recognise John in the handsome, almost feminine youth, clothed in the green and scarlet robes, and with flowing locks; and there is Peter with his eager countenance; and that man with the brooding look, and wrapt in a flame-coloured mantle, that must be Judas! The children shout and wave their palmbranches, and the procession moves on,-and that fatal triumphal entry is made into Jerusalem. Again appears that tall majestic figure in his violet robe; his features are lit up with a holy indignation: a scourge is in his hand; he overturns the tables of the money-changers, and drives before him a craven, avaricious crowd! An excited assembly of aged men, with long and venerable beards falling on their breasts, their features inflamed with rage, with gestures of vengeance, horror, and contempt, plot and decide upon his death! He meantime sits calmly at Bethany among his friends: and a woman, with beautiful long hair falling around her, kisses his feet, and anoints them with precious ointment from her alabaster vase. And now he sits at a long table, his friends on either hand. John leans upon his breast; he breaks the bread. Judas, seized by his evil thought, rises from the table, wraps himself closely in his mantle, bows his head, and passes out. Again the scene changes; it is a garden. That sad, grave man, gazes with disappointed love upon his sleeping friends; he turns away and prays, bowed in agony. There is a tumult! That figure, wrapped in its flame-coloured robe, again appears! There is an encounter; a flash of swords; and the majestic, melancholy, violetrobed figure, with meekly bowed head, is borne away! And thus ends the first act of this saddest of all tragedies. "We had come expecting to feel our souls revolt at so material a representation of Christ, as any representation of him we naturally imagined must be in a peasant's Miracle-Play. Yet so far, strange to confess, neither horror, dis gust, nor contempt was excited in our minds. Such an earnest solemnity and simplicity breathed throughout the whole of the performance, that, to me, at least, anything like anger or a perception of the ludicrous, would have seemed more irreverent on my part than was this simple, childlike rendering of the sublime Christian tragedy. We felt at times as though the figures of Cimabue's, Giotto's, and Perugino's pictures had become animated, and were moving before us; there was the simple arrangement and brilliant colour of drapery; the same earnest quiet dignity about the heads, whilst the entire absence of all theatrical effect wonderfully increased the illusion. There were scenes and groups so extraordinarily like the early Italian pictures, that you could have declared they were the works of Giotto and Perugino, and not living men and women, had not the figures moved and spoken, and the breeze stirred their richly-coloured drapery, and the sun cast long, moving shadows behind them on the stage. These effects of sunshine and shadow, and of drapery fluttered by the wind, were very striking and beautiful; one could imagine how the Greeks must have availed themselves of such striking effects in their theatres open to the sky. The performance had commenced at eight o clock, and now it was one, and a pause, therefore, ensued,-the first pause of any kind during those five long hours,-for tableau, and chorus, and acting had succeeded each other in the most rapid, unwearied, yet wearying, routine! One felt perfectly giddy and exhausted by such a ceaseless stream of music, colour, and motion. Yet the actors, as if made of iron, appeared untouched by fatigue: and up to the very end of the second part, which lasted from two to five, played with the same earnest energy, and the chorus sang with the same powerful voice. of a July sun striking upon their heads for eight long hours, to say nothing of the heat and fatigue necessarily caused by this close pressure in the pit, I cannot imagine. In the boxes, where the people were secured from the sun by awnings, inany a face had, hours before, begun to assume a pale and jaded look, and many an attitude to betray intense fatigue. "In our moment of hurried departure, however, behold the sad, pale face of Tobias Flunger, bidding us adieu! He had again assumed his fez and his gray coat; but the face was yet more gentle and dreamy, as though the shadow of the cross still lay upon it; and your eyes sought with a kind of morbid horror for the trace of the stigmata in those thin, white hands, as they waved a parting signal. It was a relief to see at his side the pleasant, bright, kind faces of his wife and little daughter. There was a wholesome look of happiness and common life about them." Mr. Bayard Taylor, in his "Eldorado," gives a description of a Mystery he saw performed at San Lionel, in Mexico. See vol. ii, chap. xi. He says: "The cannon again sounded, the people Against the wing-wall of the Hacienda del again streamed towards the theatre. We were Mayo, which occupied one end of the plaza, was again in our places, and again commenced the raised a platform, on which stood a table covered long, monotonous exhibition. But the peasant with scarlet cloth. A rude bower of cane leaves, portion of the audience were as unwearying as on one end of the platform, represented the the actors themselves; to them, indeed, the manager of Bethlehem; while a cord, stretched second part was the most intensely interesting from its top across the plaza to a hole in the of all,-Eine herzruhrende angrief ende Geschucte,- front of the church, bore a large tinsel star, suswhilst to us it became truly revolting and pain-pended by a hole in its centre. There was quite ful. There was no sparing of agony, and blood, a crowd in the plaza, and very soon a procession and horror: it was our Lord's passion stripped appeared, coming up from the lower part of the of all its spiritual suffering,-it was the anguish village. The three kings took the lead; the of the flesh.-it was the material side of Catho- Virgin, mounted on an ass that gloried in a gilded licism. It was a painful heart-rending, hurry-saddle and rose-besprinkled mane and tail, foling to and fro, amid brutal soldiery and an en- lowed them, led by the angel; and several raged mob, of that pale, emaciated, violet-robed women, with curious masks of paper, brought up figure: then there was his fainting under the the rear. Two characters of the harlequin sort, cross; the crowning him with thorns; the -one with a dog's head on his shoulders, and Scourging, the buffeting, the spitting upon him; the other a bald-headed friar, with a huge hat and the soldiers laughed, and scoffed, and de- hanging on his back,-played all sorts of antics rided with fierce brutality, and the people and for the diversion of the crowd. After making the high-priest jeered and shouted; and ever he the circuit of the plaza, the Virgin was taken to was meek and gentle. Then came the cruci- the platform, and entered the manger. King fixion; and, as the chorus sang of the great Herod took his seat at the scarlet table, with an agony, you heard from behind the curtain the attendant in blue coat and red sash, whom I strokes of the hammer as the huge nails were took to be his Prime Minister. The three kings driven into the cross, and, as your imagination remained on their horses in front of the church; believed, through his poor pale hands and feet; but between them and the platform, under the and then, as the curtain rose slowly to the dying string on which the star was to slide, walked tones of the chorus, you beheld him hanging on two men in long white robes and blue hoods, the cross between the two crucified thieves. with parchment folios in their hands. These Both myself and my companion turned away were the Wise Men of the East, as one might from the spectacle sick with horror. They di- readily know from their solemn air, and the vided his garments at the foot of the cross; they mysterious glances which they cast towards all pierced his side; the blood flowed apparently quarters of the heavens. from the wound, and from his martyred hands and feet. The Virgin and Mary Magdalen, and the deciples, lamented around the foot of the cross, in groups and attitudes such as we see in the old pictures. Then came Joseph of Arimathea; the body was taken down and laid upon white linen, and quietly, solemnly, and mournfully followed by the weeping women, was borne to the grave. Next came the visit of the women to the sepulchre; the vision of the angels; the surprise and joy of the women: and, lastly, as the grand finale, the resurrection! "The Miracle-Play was at an end; and now the peasants began once more to breathe, and to return to common life; and we most heartily rejoiced that this long, long martydom was over, A martydom in two senses, for a more fatiguing summer-day's work than the witnessing of this performance, which, with but one hour's pause, had lasted from eight in the morning till five in the evening, cannot be conceived How the poor peasants managed to endure the burning rays "In a little while a company of women on the platform, concealed behind a curtain, sang an angelic chorus to the tune of O pescator dell onda. At the proper moment, the Magi turned towards the platform, followed by the star, to which a string was conveniently attached, that it might be slid along the line. The three kings followed the star till it reached the manger, when they dismounted. and inquired for the sovereign whom it had led them to visit. They were invited upon the platform, and introduced to Herod as the only king; this did not seem to satisfy them, and, after some conversation, they retired. By this time the star had receded to the other end of the line, and commenced moving forward again, they following. The angel called them into the manger, where, upon their knees, they were shown a small wooden box, supposed to contain the sacred infant; they then retired, and the star brought them back no more. After this departure, King Herod declared himself greatly confused by what he had witnessed, and was very much afraid this newly-found king would weaken his power. Upon consultation with his Prime Minister, the Massacre of the Innocents was decided upon as the only means of security. The angel, on hearing this, gave warning to the Virgin, who quickly got down from the platform, mounted her bespangled donkey, and hurried off. Herod's Prime Minister directed all the children to be handed up for execution. A boy, in a ragged sarape, was caught and thrust forward; the Minister took him by the heels in spite of his kicking, and held his head on the table. The little brother and sister of the boy, thinking he was really to be decapitated, yelled at the top of their voices in an agony of terror, which threw the crowd into a roar of laughter. King Herod brought down his sword with a whack on the table, and the Prime Minister, dipping his brush into a pot of white paint which stood before him, made a flaring cross on the boy's face. Several other boys were caught and served likewise; and finally, the two harlequins, whose kicks and struggles nearly shook down the platform. The procession then went off up the hill, followed by the whole population of the village. All the evening there were fandangos in the méson, bonfires and rockets on the plaza, ringing of bells, and high mass in the church, with the accompaniment of two guitars, tinkling to lively polkas.' In 1852 there was a representation of this kind by Germans in Boston: and I have now before nie the copy of a play-bill, announcing the performance on June 10, 1852, in Cincinnati, of the Great Biblico-Historical Drama, the Life of Jesus Christ." THE SCRIPTORIUM.-p. 166. A most interesting volume might be written on the Calligraphers and Chrysographers, the transcribers and illuminators of manuscripts in the Middle Ages. These men were for the most part monks, who laboured sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for penance, in multiplying copies of the classics and the Scriptures. "Of all bodily labours which are proper for us," says Cassiodorus, the old Calabrian monk, "that of copying books has always been more to my taste than any other. The more so, as in this exercise the mind is instructed by the reading of the Holy Scriptures, and it is a kind of homilly to the others, whom these books may reach. It is preaching with the hand. by converting the fingers into tongues: it is publishing to men in silence the words of salvation, in fine. it is fighting against the demon with pen and ink. As many words as a transcriber writes, so many wounds the demon receives. In a word, a recluse, seated in his chair to copy books, travels into different provinces, without moving from the spot, and the labour of his hands is felt even where he is not." mility, remorse; entreating the reader's prayers and pardon for the writer's sins; and sometimes pronouncing a malediction on any one who should steal the book. A few of these I subjoin:- "As pilgrims rejoice, beholding their native land, so are transcribers made glad, beholding the end of a book." "Sweet is it to write the end of any book." "Ye who read, pray for me, who have written this book, the humble and sinful Theodulus." "As many, therefore, as shall read this book, pardon me, I beseech you, if aught I have erred in accent acute and grave, in apostrophe, in breathing soft or aspirate: and may God save you all. Amen." If anything is well, praise the transcriber; if ill, pardon his unskilfulness." "Ye who read, pray for me, the most sinful of all men, for the Lord's sake." The hand that has written this book shall decay, alas! and become dust, and go down to the grave, the corrupter of all bodies. But all ye who are of the portion of Christ, pray that I may obtain the pardon of my sins. Again and again I beseech you with tears, brothers, and fathers, accept my miserable supplication, O holy choir! I am called John, woe is me: I am called Hiereus, or Sacerdos, in name only, not in unction." "Whoever shall carry away this book, withont permission of the Pope, may he incur the malediction of the Holy Trinity, of the Holy Mother of God, of Saint John the Baptist, of the one hundred and eighteen holy Nicene Fathers, and of all the Saints, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah: and the halter of Judas; anathema, amen." "Keep safe, O Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, my three fingers, my three fingers, with which I have written this book." Mathasalas Machir transcribed this divinest book in toil, infirmity, and dangers many." Bacchius, Barbardorius and Michael Sophianus wrote this book in sport and laughter, being the guests of their noble and common friend Vin1entius Pineilus, and Petrus Nunnius, a most learned man." This last colophon, Montfaucon does not suffer to pass without reproof. Other caligraphers," he remarks, "demand only the prayers of their readers, and the pardon of their sins; but these glory in their wantonness." Nearly every monastery was provided with its Scriptorium. Nicolas de Clairvaun, St. Ber-land," nard's secretary, in one of his letters describes his cell, which he calls Scriptoriolum, where he copied books. And Mabillon, in his "Etudes Monastiques,' says that in his time were still to be seen at Citeaux many of those little cells, where the transcribers and bookbinders worked."" Silvestre's "Paleographic Universelle " contains a vast number of fac-smiles of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts of all ages and all countries; and Montfaucon, in his "Palographia Græca," gives the names of over three hundred caligraphers. He also gives an account of the books they copied, and the colophons, with which, as with a satisfactory flourish of the pen, they closed their long-continued labours. Many of these are very cus; expressing joy, hu Drink down to your peg!-p. 168. One of the canons of Archbishop Anselm, promulgated at the beginning of the twelfth century, 1 ordains the priests go not to drinking bouts, nor armk to pegs. In the times of the harddrinking Danes. King Edgar ordained that "pins or nails should be fastened into the drinkingcups or horns at stated distances, and whosoever should drink beyond those marks at one draught should be obnoxious to a severe punishment.' Sharpe, in his History of the Kings of Engsays: Our ancestors were formerly famous for compotation. their liquor was ale. and one method of amusing themselves in this way was the peg-tankard. I had lately one of them in my hand. It had on the inside a row of eight pins, one above another from top to bottom. It held two quarts, and was a noble piece of plate, so that there was a gill of ale, half a pint, Winchester measure, between each peg. The law was, that every person that drank was to empty the space between pin and pin, so that the pins were so many measures to make the company all drink alike, and to swallow the same quantity of liquor. This was a pretty sure method of making all the company drunk, especially if it be considered that the rule was, that whoever drank short of his pin, or beyond it, and even as deep as to the next pin." The Convent of St. Gildas de Rhuys.-p. 168. Abelard, in a letter to his friend, Philintus; gives a sad picture of this monastery. "I live," he says, "in a barbarous country, the language of which I do not understand; I have no conversation, but with the rudest people. My walks are on the inaccessible shore of a sea, which is perpetually stormy. My monks are only known by their dissoluteness, and living without any rule or order. Could you see the abbey, Philintus, you would not call it one. The doors and walls are without any ornament, except the heads of wild boars and hind's feet, which are nailed up against them, and the hides of frightful animals. The cells are hung with the skins of deer. The monks have not so much as a bell to wake them, the cocks and dogs supply that defect. In short, they pass their whole days in hunting; would to heaven that were their greatest fault! or that their pleasures terminated there! I endeavour in vain to recall them to their duty; they all combine against me, and I only expose myself to continual vexations and dangers. I imagine I see every moment a naked sword hanging over my head. Sometimes they surround me, and load me with infinite abuses; sometimes they abandon me, and I am left alone to my own tormenting thoughts. I make it my endeavour to merit by my sufferings, and to appease an angry God. Sometimes I grieve for the loss of the house of the Paraclete, and wish to see it again. Ah, Philintus, does not the love of Heloise still burn in my heart? I have not yet triumphed over that unhappy passion. In the midst of my retirement I sigh, I weep, I pine, I speak the dear name Heloise, and am pleased to hear the sound."- Letters of the celebrated Abelard and Heloise. Translated by Mr. John Hughes. Glasgow, 1751. Were it not for my magic garters and staff.-p. 173. Magic Stuff is thus laid down in "Les secrets The way of making the Magic Garters and the Merveilleux du Petit Albert," a French translation of "Alberti Parvi, Lucii Libellus de Mirabilibus Naturæ Arcanis." "Gather some of the herb called motherwort, when the sun is entering the first degree of the sign of Capricorn; let it dry a little in the shade, and make some garters of the skin of a young hare; that is to say, having cut the skin of the hare into strips two inches wide, double them, sew the before-mentioned herb between, and wear them on your legs. No horse can long keep up with a man on foot who is furnished with these garters.-p. 128. Put "Gather on the morrow of All Saints a strong branch of willow, of which you will make a staff, fashioned to your liking. Hollow it out, by removing the pith from within, after having furnished the lower end with an iron ferrule. into the bottom of the staff the two eyes of a young wolf, the tongue and heart of a dog, three green lizards, and the hearts of three swallows. These must all be dried in the sun, between two papers, having been first sprinkled with finely pulverized saltpetre. Besides all these, put into the staff seven leaves of vervain, gathered on the eve of St. John the Baptist, with a stone of divers colours, which you will find in the nest of the lapwing, and stop the end of the staff with a pomel of box, or of any other material you please, and be assured that this staff will guarantee you from the perils and mishaps which too often befall travellers, either froin robbers, wild beasts, mad dogs, or venomous animals. It will also procure you the good-will of those with whom you lodge.”—p. 130. |