A Glance at the Passion-Play. By Captain R. F. Burton.
(W. II. Harrison.) —Captain Burton is as vigorous and graphic as usual in his description of Ober Ammergau, of the route thither, of the place and its people, and of the great spectacle. This be regards from a different point of view from that occupied by others who have described it. It would hardly be too much to say, we suppose, that he does not regard it as a believer. It represents, he thinks, a semi-mythical in- cident which, whether it happened or not, was certainly quite unlike what Christendom has agreed in believing it to have been. This view naturally disposes him to dwell more strongly on the scenic side of the Ammergau festival. It contrasts, so far, unfavourably with the "Three Days' Pilgrimage of Mecca." It is "unreal, at best imitative realism." Mecca and the Bavarian village, however, agree in this,—how it must have pleased him to aim the two-edged gibe at men who profess to believe in something,—that "they thrive on the contributions of the pious." Of the scenic merits of the Passion. Play he is severely critical. Fine situations are poorly rendered. He cannot help a sigh, when the Mary Magdalen fails to satisfy his artistic feeling. "Oh, for Miss Bateman !" Then the mechanism is clumsy. But there is one merit, and this it is satisfactory to find acknowleged. "An extreme modesty and propriety," says this witness, not certainly too favourable, "distinguish it from all I have ever witnessed."
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