A correspondent of the Times states that the old miracle
plays are still acted at Monaco, which is now French territory. He saw the performance himself on Good Friday, and appears to have been about equally interested and horrified. The procession moved from street to street, the performers acting the expulsion of Adam and Eve, and all the more solemn scenes in the last days of the life of Christ, except the Crucifixion. The actors, he says, were becomingly serious, but to the crowd the show was a mere pageant, a carnival. The effect of such representations seems to depend to a curious degree upon the character of the people who witness them. They would be most mischievous in England, where people never succeed in believing in the actors who charm them: but in the Tyrol the people are often profoundly and not un- healthily moved by these representations.
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