Mak.

Peasse byd I: what! lette be youre fare;
I am he that hym gatt, and yond woman hym
bare.

The wife also tries to brazen it out by de-
claring that the babe has been transformed
by an elf; and the incident ends with the
thrashing of Mak, and the angels singing

Gloria in Excelsis.

Such, broadly outlined, are the features and character of the institution which in no small degree satisfied the appetite for amusement, while it affected conduct for good, during the times that lay between the opposition of the Church to the drama in the earlier epochs denying baptism to the theatre-goer, and in the later epochs denying the last consolations of religion to the actor. At its second revival the stage arose well equipped for all time by the materials which the genius of Shake speare and his lesser contemporaries supplied; and only when it falls below the level to which they raised it will it cease to be the worthy successor of these old Miracle Plays, which held their more refracting "mirror up to Nature," wherein men might see what soul of goodness dwells in things evil.

EDWARD CLODD.

From The Cornhill Magazine.
CIRCUIT NOTES.

cheap-jack's dress, playing protection and other tricks with the open-mouthed electors of Bucks.

Now in the crowded court, white faces against the black oak and the polished steel halberts of the police glinting in the gas, stands a young architect in the dock, educated above his capacity or the chances of honestly exercising it, into crime, and charged with sending a threatening letter to his aunt. A very bad, fluent, dangerous type, easily to become a Casanova; and immediately, much to his furious surprise, to receive a sentence of six years' penal servitude. His lips move, he grows dead white and quivers; then, turning to the gallery, shakes his fist and yells, "I'll be revenged on you when I'm out," and is hurried below amidst what newspaper reporters call a sensation. Poor old lady, his aunt; imagine her terrified calculation of the expiry of the boy's sentence, her horrors as the winter evenings draw in and faces are fancied at the window in November mirk, her shudders at the garden-gate slams and steps come up the path. Family quarrels, family vengeances, depend upon it the young villain will know best how to terrify and harm her; why, what are our relatives for if it be not to know very well all that we like and all that we particularly hate?

Poachers follow, tattered hawthorn buds, old soldiers in trouble many a time before for desertion and assault and trespass, and now caught with nets and bludAylesbury: November 19.- A court geons and stones (which they swear were like a Georgian chapel, pillared and gal-apples), by the three velveteens who give leried in black oak, with an ancient cheerful evidence, and display the guns weary clock that has ticked through many and caps taken, with a satisfaction they a famous trial and many a famous speech, don't attempt to disguise. The father of forensic and political. Here was tried one of the prisoners with the most scrupu. Quaker Tawell, who poisoned a woman lous stupidity proves an alibi on the wrong at Slough, and earned for his advocate the day, and they are all convicted. That is sobriquet of Applepip Kelly, the advocate the explanation of most of these alibis making the hopeless effort to explain the that seem so conclusive; they are the presence of prussic acid by the evidence incidents of the wrong day, only you can't of a large number of apples and their always make it clear to the jury; so alibis pips eaten by the deceased; Tawell, the are mostly successful. Hence Mr. Wellfirst criminal captured by the electric teler's wail for the use of one by Samivel; be egraph, and properly and duly hanged. had often, no doubt, heard their efficacy That is the court-house window, with a discussed at assize time by attorneys in high light like an artist's in Charlotte the bar. Street, out of which he stepped to die, dropping (as I am informed) into a teachest below. You see in these quiet country places, where executions are scarce, one must do the best one can and is sometimes driven to shifts. And here Disraeli delivered himself of many a gay prophetic utterance in the days when Punch drew him in a smock-frock or

Bedford: November 21. -I just went down below the court to look at the cells, and finding one of them locked, asked who was inside. In reply the jailer opened the door, and in the dingy grey light I recog. nized an old man, Salvation Army, who had that morning been sentenced to eight years' penal servitude for a very gross crime; and now, with his head on his

66

hands, spectacles pushed up and cap on the back of his rough grey hair, was quietly eating bread and meat. "What have you got there?" I asked him. Eight years, ," he replied, with his mouth full. 'No, no; what are you eating? "Oh, bread and meat." "Good?" 66 Very good." "You were sentenced this morning." Ay." "Are you sorry?" "Nowhere to go, no home,” the old man said, pushing down his spectacles to look at me, and then picking at the brown bread while he talked, much as an old woman knits. "Only got a sister, she's got enough to do to look after herself, don't want me; no wife, no child, may as well be in prison. I'm sixty-four years of age." "You don't mean to give any trouble, eh? You're going to behave yourself?" "Look here," said he, laying a couple of knubbly fingers on my arm, I was sitting beside him, "I'm one of the quietest old men ever stepped, don't give nobody any trouble. Ask the police at Bastow, they'll tell you I'm one of the quietest you ever saw in your life; always was and always mean to be." A kindly light gleamed over his goatish old face, while the policeman laughed and nodded his head. "You're all right," he said.

that was the man, she was sure, the man in the dock. Moreover, in his lodgings was found a coat, admittedly the prisoner's, with just such a tear. Notwithstanding, the jury acquitted him, and with a shout he threw his cap up to the gallery and was carried off in a carriage and pair by his rejoicing trades union brethren. Now, in 1864 these outrages were examined into by a committee sitting at Sheffield, and an indemnity was given to any one giving evidence before them; when not only was it proved that the prisoner of 1861 had not thrown the bomb, by the man coming forward who had, but it was also clear that the witnesses at his trial were right; he had been in the street at the time, and hearing the explosion and running away, just as any one else might have done, had been seen, and had torn his coat exactly in the manner described. The jury were right, though there wasn't probably another soul in court except themselves and the prisoner who thought them so.

One hears a good many tales on circuit and can't tell how many of them are known outside the profession, or are worth reproducing. Here's an instance. A prisoner was being tried for his life in the days when horse-stealing was a capital offence; We were talking last night of juries, and the evidence was all against him and he as to how often their verdicts were wrong. had no defence but an alibi; swore it was Every one knows they often acquit wrong- a case of mistaken identity, that he was a fully; no one could give of his own expe- sailor and was away in the West Indies rience an instance of a wrongful conviction. on some cutting-out expedition at the time One of our party who had been present at when the affair happened; thousands of the trial, in York Castle in 1861, gave a miles away and knew nothing whatever curious example of that indefinite some about it. Just before the vital, or lethal, thing, instinct or whatever it may be, on moment of sentence, prisoner catches which (in default of actual evidence) juries sight of a bluff, sailor-like gentleman dozoften act, and which as often seems to ing in the magistrates' seats. "Lieutenant lead them right as wrong. A man was Maintop, ahoy," he shouts, "the man who being tried for a trades union outrage; he can prove my innocence." Sailor-like was charged with having thrown a bomb man wakes with a start, rubs his eyes, is into a house where a workman lived who requested by the judge to recognize the had refused to join them; he had mistaken prisoner, who excitedly calls to him that the house, thrown the bomb into a bed- he is Jack Bowline of H.M.S. Thunder, room where an old woman was asleep, the one of the boat's crew who cut out the bomb had exploded and killed her. The French frigates in Porto Rico Bay. Sailorevidence against the prisoner was not like man, flustered at being so suddenly conclusive, but seemed tolerably strong. woke and finding all eyes fixed on him, A girl living opposite had heard the crash, declares in his hearty honest fashion that had looked out and seen a man she be- though there certainly was a Jack Bowline lieved to be the prisoner running away; in his watch, and one of the aforesaid would not swear positively, but to the crew, he does not recognize him in the best of her belief that was the man. An- prisoner. Increasing, overpowering exother witness swore to him more positive-citement of the prisoner, who like all men ly; for, running away along the side of the "will give all that he hath for his life; wall, his coat had caught in a hook outside sailor-like distress of the lieutenant, torn a butcher's shop, this happening in a low between the determination to say nothing quarter of Sheffield, and turning to disen- but the absolute truth and the desire to gage it the moon fell full on his face, and save a fellow-creature's life. At last, says

It appears he believed himself to have | there, might have been dead some weeks; heart disease, due to lifting a sack three truly, from that box the death-watch might years ago, since when he has been mainly have been heard and directed their search. in bed, eating and drinking, moaning and She gets three months and appears to dozing. The little servant of the farm have expected more. tells us he always kept his hand over his heart, had worn quite a place there in his clothes, rubbed off all the buttons of his coats and waistcoats; was always complaining of himself and life, and very nightly. There are more of such lives being lived than one would imagine; poor creatures drifting into madness between the sheets. I knew an old lady who for years turned absolutely night into day; breakfasted at half past eight in the evening, dined at one, tea at five, and supper at seven in the morning; then to bed again. The servants were told of it when they were engaged, and seem rather to have enjoyed it. They got into the habit of sleeping between mealtimes and had the whole day to themselves. The old lady used to write her letters, read a good deal and walk out about the grounds,

moon or not.

As for Habakkuk the jury find him mad and he stumbles moaning below, shortly to become violent and encased in a straight-waistcoat.

A village quarrel next; gossip Tib charges gossip Joan with breaking and entering and stealing a ham, one of two but recently cured. She produces the fellow to it, and the jury are called upon to compare it with the remains found in the prisoner Joan's cottage. They turn it this way and that and pronounce unani. mously that the two do not belong to the same pig. Discomfiture of Tib, who wraps the ham in her apron, rubs her nose and leaves the court talking virulently to herself.

The Castle, November 30. The grey court, with its fragments of ancient Norman work peering in, waits the judge. A far flourish of trumpets, another nearer — The King drinks to Hamlet! — the judge enters, bows; crime shuffles up to be tried and sentenced. First, the farm-girl, with swollen, crying face, who shamefully hid her child. While she mops her poor shapeless cheeks, the judge with a few kindly sentences hands her over to her father to look after; she is to come up for judgment when called upon. And next a city Miss who did much the same, and looks as though it were not the first time she had been in such a position. Was lodging quietly in a respectable house when a watch was missed; box in her room searched for it, body of a child found

And now tragedy, veritable tragedy, as I understand it. The prisoner, a young surgeon, bends his head over the edge of the dock while the counsel for the prosecution, emotionless and even, reads the letters and unfolds the melancholy, nay, terrible story. How flat and bald the darling sweetheart, faithful lover, I worship you, I adore you, with all my love forever and ever, sound in that horsehair voice. The prisoner listens as though he had never heard them before; I can see (shall I ever forget?) his young face, his dusty hair, his pincenez, his chestnut moustache, drawn cheeks, and unshaven chin. You may see such young fellows at the seaside with the girls they are engaged to marry; they are going to wait a little, to get an appointment, to buy a practice, then to marry and live happy ever after. They come of what are called “nice people," of the best middle-class and suburban types. You may see them in the dress circle at the Haymarket and merry at the German Reed's, and laughing in the underground after afternoon performances; they read and think a little for themselves and throng the Academy in June; if tragedy lurk anywhere you do not think of it with them, nor ever conceive them as now the young fellow sits in that stained dock, desperately fighting for his liberty.

It is the young Lord Hamlet who hath betrayed the fair Ophelia, in the country rectory, amid all the pleasant throng of tennis parties and village concerts and cheerful neighborly at-homes; there being no shrewd Polonius to warn her tender inexperience - she was only eighteen When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows;

.

nothing but the light of her great and constant love, poor soul, to lead her wrong. O Rose of May! the fair Ophelia goes mad; acute mania, the doctor tells me; and Laertes brooding in the lonely rectory, all dark now to her happy laughter and bright face, lights on all the horrors of the story among the letters in her desk, and the young Lord Hamlet is arrested. What he must be suffering as he sits there, I dare not think; from ten in the morning till six at night, he sits with folded arms watching his liberty beaten like a shuttlecock back from counsel to counsel, now high, now low. How sublime the mercy

it seems to me that has clouded the poor | cried so when she lay here ill, and induced Ophelia's wits that she knows nothing of her greatly to self-pity. "Come to me, it; she thinks herself happy, I am told, Jack," she moans; "the last time I saw away in the asylum, runs to the window you, the firelight was shining on your and claps her hands, believes her lover glasses and something snapped at my with her; her mind has grown bird-like, heart when you looked back at me from leaping and twittering; how will they the door;" and "come to me," she moans, keep from her, when she grows sane, the when they take her to the sea to try what tragedy of its interval? that will do, "come to me and I will show you my mother's grave; I have not been there since I was a little one in black."

The young surgeon is acquitted, after an obstinate fight among the jury. He steps out of the dock a free man, gaunt and haggard, so marked with that long agony that by those marks alone I should know him. He is only four-and twenty, and as yet not altogether corrupt. His youth, as with other diseases, is in his favor.

A word in thine ear, Lord Hamlet. If, when the fair Ophelia grows sane again, ceases the singing of her pitiful little songs, thou art not at her side, thy whole life hers, thine only endeavor to make her forget the sorrowful past, thou shouldst be cast headlong from the platform of Elsinore, the prey of every obscene bird that cares for carrion. Look to it. Warwick: December 16.

Murder,

I stand in her father's church, against the organ which she always played on Sunday; for, moved to profound pity, I paid a melancholy pilgrimage to rectory and village, of which I seem to know so much from reading so many of her letters to her lover. It is a day of black and bitter frost, and I have walked four miles from the station across a silent country to a silent village. The blacksmith has the key of the church and lets me in. She was a fine singer, he says, and always had a kind word for every one. He wonders who I am who want to see so unpretentious a place of worship, and ask so many questions about Miss May. The house door of the rectory opens on to the churchyard; yes, that's Miss May's dog. I was sure it was, he comes to me when I call his name. That is her room, with the blinds half down and the bulrushes show-quiet and inoffensive, in a white slop; ing in the corner. I recognize the lime- killed an old woman with a coal hammer, tree outside, in which she tells her lover because she was always "hagging" him, of the nightingale that sang on the top- and charged him finally with stealing a most boughs on the night of her new pair of her stockings. He's sixty-three, found happiness, when they were first scavenger, employed by the corporation of engaged. The bird was singing to her Birmingham, and is described by all the only, she was sure, and so she would not witnesses as a peaceable, hard-working old wake her little sister to listen. Never was soul, except when he's got the beer in a brighter, better nature wrecked upon the him, and then he's nasty. It is murder shoals of passion; in all the letters I read, reduced to its simplest elements, and extending over many months, breathing there's no way out but death. He stands so devoted and unselfish a love, there was up to receive sentence and I see no sign of not one word in them one would not have fear in him except just one catch of the wished one's sister to write; not one word breath; the white slop just heaves once of pretence or affectation, but the beating and with all submission he walks below. of a great heart through them all, beating He will have three weeks in which to prelike a bird against the meshes of a net. pare for the great change, and with a firm And most pitiful of all, when insanity be-step he will walk to the scaffold. These gins and the poor writing begins to get hurried and shapeless, when she breaks into incoherent passages of Scripture and speaks of her mother who died when she was a child "there is the door banging again," she writes, "they never think of poor mother's head; and describes her, pale and worn, as she sees her, dead so many years, working at a sewing-machine. She cannot sleep and she gets up early to write a novel "The Farewell of Love." Her hands are so hot she must take off her rings and wash them again. The wind is crying round the angle of the house; it

men always die with great fortitude, or insensibility, whichever it may be. The fact is I think they are dead, have died, long before they came the hands of the executioner.

In the old days condemned men were generally hanged the day after sentence. They used to pray for a "long day," which meant eight-and-forty hours; it was the most they got. Captain John Donellan, who was sentenced in this very court for the poisoning of his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton, with laurel water in 1781, was condemned late on a Friday