which the serpent is bound, is being elevated, and the chorus in their song show that this is a prefigurement of the manner in which our Saviour was to be raised also on His cross. The third picture brings before us a view of the brazen serpent as set up, and Moses pointing to it before the assembled multitude. By looking up to this Nehushtan, or brazen trifle, as Hezekiah called it afterwards, those Israelites who loathed the Heaven-sent manna in their journey from Ibor to Zalmonah, and were bitten by fiery serpents, were cured. It may appear strange, at first glance, that the reptile, associated with evil, should be held symbolical of any good; but we must remember that even among pagan Greeks serpents were esteemed sacred by Esculapius, who was adored in Epidaurus under the form of one. This tableau had a prophetic analogy to Christ, inasmuch as the biting of the Israelites represented the effects of sin, and the bearer of the antidote was in the likeness of the bearer of the poison, as Christ took upon Himself human flesh in order to work out our salvation. As the curtain rises on a country landscape, a young man comes on to the forestageSimon the Cyrenean. The poor boy who enacted this part in 1870 fell on the battlefield during the Franco-German war. He pauses, hearing a noise from the street to the right; he hesitates, but finally resumes his journey, and is turning in the direction of the tumult, just as the procession which had caused it comes on the scene, headed by a Roman soldier, mounted on a dapple-grey horse, bearing the Imperial standard. A centurion, the bâton of command in his right hand, marshals a body of troops, who escort the Saviour as he totters under the weight of the Cross. The guards who are immediately beside him keep brutally goading him, although he nearly sinks to the ground at each step. Four executioners, clad in yellow jerkins and carrying adzes and hammers and baskets, with other tools of their horrid trade, on their shoulders, pace beside Christ, and behind this party come the two thieves, guarded, and dragging along their crosses, while a Jewish rabble follows, hooting and mocking, and ever pressing forward. The procession halts a moment, the Saviour being so completely overcome that he is unable to carry the Cross a yard further. A soldier roughly accosts Simon, takes him by the shoulder, and shoves him under the rood, when the procession again moves onward. Meanwhile, some of the wives of Jerusalem, with infants in their arms, emerge from a side street, and, with tears in their eyes, compassionate our Lord, who addresses them in the memorable words of Scripture beginning, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me." As the procession passes on towards the hill appointed for the execution, the Virgin Mary, bent with sorrow, slowly enters, accompanied by John and Magdalen, and follows its course in the distance. This whole passage- -one of the most painful in the Iliad of our Lord's suffering is put on the boards with a force that brings it home to the

senses as if it were a scroll from the passing life of every day that was being unfolded. I have seen the progress of Rysoor to the stake under the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands, in Victorien Sardou's drama of Patrie, as rendered on a great theatre by one of the first French actors, and with all the accessories of art that a full exchequer can command; and, frankly, its blue fire was pale compared to the acting of these humble wood-carvers and peasants.

The chorus, on entering for the sixteenth vorstellung (which is entitled "Jesus at Golgotha "), have changed their bright-coloured mantles for others of sable, and wear mourning wreaths instead of the gilt circlets that crowned them before. They sing to a soft musical accompaniment an invitation to the audience to come with them to witness the last suffering of Him who redeemed us by His blood. This is rendered more solemn and striking by the muffled sound of hammering which is heard from behind. On the music ceasing, the curtain rises, discovering "the place of the skulls." The two thieves are already impaled, their arms turned back and tied over the arms of the cross. Our Saviour is nailed on the Holy Rood, which lies on the ground, but is immediately lifted to its position. It was the painting that Albrecht Durer drew, vivified under the clear canopy of God's sky to all. How true is every detail, the mocking soldiers, the executioners going in a tradesmanlike way about their business, the centurion, formal as a veteran adjutant (for him it was only an incident in the round of duty); the standard-bearer, sternly still on his grey steed; the mob, such a mob as hungered under our own gallowstrees when they bore their fruit; and then the writhing thieves, and the figure in the midst, the thorn-crowned head drooped to one side in beautiful resignation, the limbs immobile because of the fortitude that made them rigid under pain, the arms outstretched in torturing tension, gouts of crimson staining the midpalm where the sharp nails had been driven in through flesh and sinew to the wood. On the board over the head of the Crucified were legible the words, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Nothing that is related in Holy Writ was wanting, the filling of the sponge with vinegar and conveying it to His lips on a branch of hyssop to quench His thirst, the conversation with the thieves, and the conversion of one of them; the division of His outer garment by the executioners who tore it into four parts and then threw dice for the seamless robe; and the spear put to the side when forth gushed a quick spout of blood and water. The legs of the thieves were broken by resounding blows of india-rubber clubs which gave the process a repugnant reality, and their limp bodies were taken down from the respective crosses and borne away. Mary came in, with her Magdalen and others and John; the legacy "Woman, behold thy son," "Son, behold thy mother," was given; then there was the cry of "Eli,

Eli, lama sabachthani," and all was over, as a messenger, rushing in affrighted, announced that the veil of the Temple was rent asunder. The Virgin, red-eyed, dropped sobbing to John's shoulder, and Magdalen, her long blonde locks floating downwards, kneels, clasps the foot of the rood and embraces it.

The descent from the cross was not similar to that shown in the celebrated picture of Rubens in Antwerp. Joseph Meyer had been in his painful position for three-and-twenty minutes. Depending for support on a bracket for his feet, a disguised ligature at his waist, and a band at the back of his head, while the arms were kept extended by clamps of iron bending over the fingers and connecting them to the timber; he must have had a strong trial to his nerves and powers of endurance. The cross is some twelve feet high. He tells me his position on it for such a length of time is very fatiguing to the muscles of the chest, and by the wished-for moment when he is taken down his hands are quite blue and bloodless and the arms numb, as when one happens to have got a limb under him in sleep so as to impede the circulation. His removal from the cross had to be performed very gently, to obviate the danger of an attack of apoplexy from the sudden return of the blood to the channels which had been shut against it. A ladder was placed at the back and another in front. A man got up on that behind, took away the crown of thorns, and drew the clamps; Joseph of Arimathea, mounting on the steps of the ladder, handed up the folds of a fine linen cloth, these were passed under the arms, and by degrees the body, looking terribly inanimate, was lowered, the process of embalmment with unguents was gone through, and then still inanimate, it was slowly borne away. The curtain fell, and there was a deep respiration from the spectators as of a strong swimmer recovering his breath after a lengthened dive.

At the return of the chorus they had removed their funeral cloaks, and were arrayed in festal mantles. The Resurrection, which comes next in order, is analogically typified in two tableaux from the Old Testament, to wit, Jonas in the act of being cast forth by the whale, to symbolise Christ's rising from the dead, after three days' confinement in mother-earth, and the destruction of Pharaoh's host in the Red Sea to represent the victory through redemption for the chosen stock. I like not the former picture, the pasteboard monster of the deep, with the prophet crouching in its vast gullet, had in it something stagey that jarred on my frame of mind; but the second was not open to the same objection; spears, shields, banners, horses' heads, chariot wheels, and an occasional stiff arm of some drowning warrior, were arranged in a most elaborate disarrangement. Gustave Doré himself could not have displayed more imagination had he been charged with the grouping. Some artists, I hear, had been actually giving hints to the curé of the village as to the placing of the characters

in the piece, which, I am glad to say, he very properly did not receive with thanks.

"At this point," they urged, "it would be effective if the Virgin fell in a swoon by the cross.'

"Gentlemen," he answered, "the Scriptures tell us she stood, and to that I hold."

The closing scenes of the Passions-spiel were but the familiar episode to all Bible students, of the falling away of the seal of the vault in Joseph of Arimathea's garden to the astonishment of the guards, and the Saviour's Ascension; the visit of Magdalen to the empty sepulchre; the visit of Peter and the apparition of Christ and angels to both; and finally a tableau of the Glorified, with a pink and white banner held aloft, standing on an eminence, surrounded by His mother and His faithful disciples, His face held up as if in greeting to the angel attendants who awaited Him above. This brought the curtain down for the last time, and the chorus poured forth a jubilant final Hallelujah as the church clock struck five, and the Mystery ended.

(To be continued.)

THE RUSSIAN PEASANTS BEFORE AND AFTER

THEIR EMANCIPATION.

By C. L. JOHNSTONE,

AUTHOR OF TYRANTS OF TO-DAY; OR, THE SECRET SOCIETY," ETC.

THERE is nothing more difficult to obtain than exact statistics in Russia. The Russians and Poles are thorough orientals as regards inaccuracy; and as we are not strangers in this country to the different colouring which political feeling will give to current events, we can understand that where political and social factions are more passionately opposed than is happily the case with us, the members of a commission may be inclined to report favourably or the reverse of a particular institution, according to its own special views or interests. This has been the case with many of the official reports that have been sent to the Russian government with regard to the condition of the peasantry. There was a very general wish among many of the old serf proprietors, that the emancipation should not be found a success; and as the commissioners were all drawn from that class, their opinions on the subject were far more discouraging than the observations of uninterested foreigners bear out. The Russians have also short memories, and instead of comparing the peasants now with what they were previous to 1861, are apt to contrast them with those in the most favoured parts of Europe.

The Slavonic race is fond of moving about. The late Emperor traversed an enormous amount of space in the course of his reign. The nobility in Russia are more migratory than those in other parts of Europe; and the peasants travel hundreds of miles, or even thousands in search of work, or on pilgrimages. The railways now afford them facilities which were wanting six-and-twenty years ago; and every spring, trains arrive at St. Petersburg and Moscow with the third-class carriages crammed with workmen from the provinces, who leave their wives and children to attend to the pig, cow, and the plot of land which belongs to each peasant proprietor, and act as woodcutters, porters, carpenters, whitewashers, and in almost every mechanical capacity, in the two capitals during the summer. They live out of doors, and work day and night, taking a well-earned sleep at any odd moment when it is convenient. In the autumn, they return with their wages to their villages; and to save lights many sleep all the dark hours, which in a Russian