states was certainly not a measure calculated to maintain the public peace, and acts of violence continually occurred which sometimes led to actual hostilities.

What orders Khoorshed Pasha may have had on this subject we do not pretend to say, but he was undoubtedly well aware of the wishes of the Porte. He succeeded in setting race against race, and class against class. The Christians were encouraged to complain of their chiefs, while the chiefs were finally upheld; and thus thorough disunion was spread among the Maronites, and he and his subordinates afforded active assistance to the Druses.

The accounts of the late events in Syria which have appeared in the newspapers and in the papers laid before Parliament, fully prove the complicity of the Turkish local authorities in all that has taken place. It remains to be seen how far the Government at Constantinople is implicated in these transactions. Its conduct with respect to the following points will in our opinion be decisive whether its professions of regret at those atrocities are sincere.

The result of Khoorshed Pasha's trial will be of the utmost importance. Ahmed Pasha, Osman Bey, and the other ruffians who have disgraced the Turkish uniform have acted too recklessly to leave the result of their trial doubtful. With regard to the chief culprit the case is otherwise.

Al

though he is the immediate author of all the misery which has been occasioned, he acted with too much caution to afford direct evidence of his guilt. Circumstantial evidence there is, and enough to warrant his conviction; but a partial tribunal, which would not even dare to acquit the others, might venture to make an attempt in his favour.

The steps which will be taken with regard to the Christian women who have been carried off by Mahometans will be the next measure which will test the sincerity of the Turkish Government, whose civil and military authorities have everywhere distinguished themselves by taking a most active part in these outrages. They must comprise the con

dign punishment of the offenders, the release of their victims, and a provision for their future maintenance.

Whole villages have been compelled to embrace the Moslem belief. We have stated above the Turkish policy with regard to cases of conversion to Mahometanism. What course will be pursued in Syria?

Besides the punishment of those guilty of acts of violence towards Christians, of the destruction of their property, and the desecration of churches, fines should be levied on the towns which have been the scenes of these outrages, and of a nature to cause the consequences attendant on the commission of such crimes to be remembered; and, lastly, the remaining Christians should be maintained while in their present state of destitution, and relieved from taxation for two years at least.

After reparation for the past, guarantees for the future are to be considered. We presume it will be the duty of the European commission which has proceeded to Syria to determine what these shall be, as well as to insist on full and satisfactory redress.

The

The Turkish plan for the future government of the Lebanon will be undoubtedly the establishment of their own direct rule in both the Maronite and Druse districts. But France would never consent to this. French gold enabled the Maronites to attain to that degree of civilisation which the Druse outrages have just brought to an abrupt and sudden termination. In return for French capital advanced to them they sold their silk produce at a fixed price to the merchants of Marseilles and Lyons. country was covered with homesteads, and abounded with mulberry trees. Now there is scarcely a house belonging to a Christian which has not been burnt; almost all their trees have been destroyed; and about 2,000,000l. French capital, which had been invested in this manner, has been lost. We feel sure that the Emperor will insist on steps being taken so as to effectually prevent a recurrence of Druse atrocities and of Turkish misgovernment. The best course

would be to invest the Viceroy of Egypt with the Pashalic of Syria. If his offer to send at once 10,000 troops into Syria had been accepted, not half the mischief which has happened would have taken place. If the Turkish rule continues, we do not see a possibility of the return of the French troops for some time. It would have been well if an English force had also been sent to Syria; but our Government and merchants seem to leave that part of Turkey entirely to French enterprise.

The punishment to be inflicted on the Druses must depend on the evidence which Khoorshed Pasha's trial brings to light. If it is true that their chiefs acted by his orders, the punishment of these chiefs, especially Mahomed Nasur and of a few others, and the imposition of fines, would suffice; but, if the Druses acted spontaneously, a much sterner measure of retribution should be inflicted. The Porte was much annoyed at the turn affairs took when the massacres extended beyond the Lebanon. The Government of Constantinople had nothing to do with that, and hence the severity to Ahmed Pasha, who after all was not so bad as others: his misconduct was confined to permitting acts of murder, violence, and plunder; he did not take an active part in, or derive benefit from them himself. The Porte would have been well pleased if the Maronites and Druses had facilitated their desire for supremacy in both districts by mutual destruction, and had no wish that massacres should occur on such a scale as to lead to European intervention. The events in the Lebanon might have passed off with comparative impunity, owing to the jealousy of the great powers; it was the news from Damascus which led to the French expedition.

It is impossible to imagine greater dangers to threaten any state than those which now menace the Turkish empire. The Sultan is weak, extravagant, and most unpopular. The officers of the Government are, with scarcely an exception, corrupt; and the Ministers are universally distrusted. The treasury is empty, and efforts have been made, with

little success, to raise another loan. The army is unpaid and dissatisfied, and all classes of the community are discontented. The Mahometans are indignant that the Christians have been so far placed, nominally even, on a level with themselves, and at the loss of their former prestige. The Christians are almost reduced to desperation by their miserable condition and by repeated disappointments with regard to measures for their relief. The papers on the state of Syria from 1858 to 1860, recently laid before Parliament, show the normal state of the remoter provinces. In Bosnia and the Herzegovine, an insurrection may take place at any moment, and great excitement everywhere prevails. Such being the state of things the slightest incident may produce the impending catastrophe. Where one sees on every side the cireumstances which indicate and would bring about the downfall of even the most powerful monarchy, we may ask what ought to be the policy of Great Britain.

Our first duty is, laying aside all sectarian prejudices, to take measures for the welfare of our fellow-Christians. In the last few months thousands have suffered merely because they were called Christians, for Jews have in no case been molested. Great Britain has the power to prevent a recurrence of these events, and will incur great responsibility and guilt if that power is not properly exercised. If another trial can be given to the Ottoman Empire consistently with this object, it should be done; if not, its existence must terminate, or be so circumscribed as to place no obstacles to the bond fide fulfilment of this primary duty. It is true that Great Britain, France, and Austria have guaranteed the maintenance of the Turkish Empire; but that treaty is not binding if the Porte cannot enforce the first principles of civil society.

In the reign of William the Third, the great question of the day was the future of the Spanish monarchy: the line of policy which England then took up arms to maintain was directly at

variance with the wishes of the people

of Spain. The result, however, of the war of the Spanish succession was the triumph of the cause England had opposed; notwithstanding which, none of the dreadful consequences that had been anticipated ensued. This is a striking This is a striking illustration of the danger of acting

against the unanimous desires of a nation, and should be an additional inducement to us, in dealing with the eastern question, to pay due regard to the wishes of the people, especially of the Christian population, of Turkey, and not to attach too much importance to remote and improbable contingencies.

MOST travellers who have passed during this summer through the neighbourhood of Munich, or of Innsbruck, will have heard of the dramatic representation of the history of the Passion in the village of Ober-Ammergau, which, according to custom, occurred in this the tenth year from the time of its last performance, Several circumstances have, in all probability, attracted to it a larger number of our countrymen than has been the case on former occasions. Its last celebration, in 1850, has been described in the clever English novel of "Quits." Its fame was widely spread by two Oxford travellers who witnessed it in that

same year. It forms the subject of one of the chapters in the "Art Student of Munich." There is reason, therefore, to believe that many Englishmen who will have frequented the spot in this year will not be unwilling to have briefly recalled to their thoughts some of the impressions left on one who, like themselves, was an eye-witness of this remarkable scene, These reflections shall be divided into those suggested by the history of the spectacle, and those suggested by the spectacle itself.1

1 Three printed works have been used for

this description, over and above the personal

observation of the writer :

1. The Songs of the Chorus, with the general Programme of the Drama, and a short Preface.

2. "The Passion Play in Ober-Ammergau." By Ludwig Clarus. 2d Edition. Munich,

1860.

3. A similar shorter work, by Devrient, published at Leipsic in 1851.

I. Ober-Ammergau is, as its name implies, the uppermost of two villages, situated in the gau, or valley of the Ammer, which, rising in the Bavarian highlands, falls through this valley into the wide plains of Bavaria, and joins the Isar not far from Munich. Two or three peculiarities distinguish it from the other villages of the same region. Standing at the head of its own valley, and therefore secluded from the thoroughfare of Bavaria on the one side, it is separated on the other side from the great highroad to Innsbruck by the steep pass of Ettal. Although itself planted on level ground, it is still a mountain village, and the one marked feature of its situation is a high columnar rock, called "the Covel," apparently the origin of its ancient name, "Coveliaca." At the head of the pass is the great monastery of Ettal, founded by the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria, which, though dissolved at the beginning of this century, exercised considerable influence in giving to the secluded neighbouring village its peculiarly religious or ecclesiastical character. The inhabitants of the village have been long employed on the carving and painting of wooden ornaments, toys, and sacred images, which, whilst it required from them a degree of culture superior to that of mere peasants, also gave them a

There was a short but complete account of the representation this year in the Guardian Newspaper of July 25, 1860, which renders unnecessary any further consecutive descrip

tion.

familiarity with sacred subjects1 beyond what would be felt even amongst the religious peasantry of this part of Germany. Half the population are employed in these carvings. Half the houses are painted with these subjects.

In this spot, in consequence of a pestilence which devastated the surrounding villages, apparently in the train of a famine which followed on the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, a portion of the inhabitants made a vow, in 1633, that thenceforth they would represent every tenth year the Passion of Christ in a sacred play. Since that time the vow has been kept, with the slight variation that in 1680 the year was changed, so as to accord with the recurring decennial periods of the century.

Its date is important, as fixing its rise beyond the limit of the termination of the Middle Ages, with which, both in praise and blame, it is sometimes confounded. These religious mysteries, or dramatic representations of sacred subjects, existed, to a certain extent, before the Middle Ages began, as is proved by the tragedy of the Passion of Christ, by Gregory Nazianzen. They were in full force during the Middle Ages, in the form of "mysteries," or "moralities." But, almost alone of the ancient representations of sacred subjects to the outward senses, they survivd ethe Middle Ages and the shock of the Reformation. This very vow which gave birth to the drama at Ammergau was made, as we have seen, in the middle of the seventeenth century. Through the whole of that century, or even in the next, such spectacles were common in the South of Germany. They received, in Northern Germany, the sanction of Luther. "Such "spectacles," he is reported to have said, "often do more good, and produce more "impression, than sermons." The founder of the Lutheran Church in Sweden, Archbishop Peterson, encouraged them by precept and example.

1 There is one other locality in Tyrol where the inhabitants are similarly employed-the

Grödner Thal near Botzen.

The Lutheran Bishops of the Danish Church composed them down to the end of the seventeenth century. In Holland, a drama of this kind is ascribed to the pen of no less a person than Grotius. Even in England, where they were naturally checked by the double cause, first, of the vast outburst of the secular drama, and then of the rise of Puritanism, they were performed in the time of the first Stuarts; and Milton's first sketch of the "Paradise Lost," as is well known, was a sacred drama, of which the opening speech was Satan's address to the sun. There was a period when there seemed to be a greater likelihood of the retention of sacred plays in England, than of the retention of painted windows, or of surplices. Relics of these mysteries, of which the sacred meaning, however, has long past away, still linger in the rude plays through which, in some parts of England, the peasants represent the story of St. George, the Dragon, and Beelzebub.

The repugnance, therefore, which has, since the close of the seventeenth century, led to the gradual suppression of these dramatic spectacles, is not to be considered a special offspring of Protestantism, any more than their origin and continuance was a special offspring of the Church of Rome. The prejudice against them has arisen from far more general causes, which have affected, if not in equal degree, yet to a large extent, the public opinion of Roman Catholic as well as of Protestant countries. If in the Protestant nations the practice died out more easily, in Roman Catholic nations it was more directly and severely denounced by the hierarchy. In 1779 a general prohibition was issued by the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, whose high authority in the country which was the chief seat of these performances gives to his decree a peculiar weight and interest. All the objections which most naturally occur to the most refined or the most Protestant mind find expression in the Archbishop's manifesto-"The mixture "of sacred and profane"-" the ludi