Shakespeare's use of prose and verse, necessitates a recognition by the audience of the merits of different performers. A boy with a good voice earns a handsome income, and, for the time being, is almost as much a notoriety as a Western histrionic genius, though boys are associated with the only really weak part of the performance,' the female rôles.12 But beyond this there is nothing, not even applause, to give prominence to the individual actor, on ne témoigne jamais une admiration venant de l'esprit.' Were this not so the impersonator of the holy Imam would become an object of interest as well as the Imam himself, and the drama would speedily be secularised. The peculiar position of Ober-Ammergau has enabled it hitherto to resist the influence of idolisation, and thereby to preserve the sacred character of its Passion-drama. There is, however, one person connected, though indirectly, with the representation on whom the Persian audience vents its approval; he is the modern representative of the choragus; on him the success of the whole performance hinges. He does not retire behind the scenes when the play begins, but remains to form the connecting link between the actors and the audience; he makes audible cominents and explanations; he solicits the pity of the spectators where he considers an exhibition of pity due; he arranges everything; he perfects the children in their parts, places them on the stage, buckles on the swords of the actors, and supplies them with anything they may require. He is recognised as the mainspring of the tazyah, and his person is sacred. He is called 'oostad' or master, a title which retains something of the simple reverence of the olden time. It is an act of piety, and a part of the performance itself, to present him with costly gifts. Many a rich shawl is handed to him in sight of the whole audience.

The excessive impressionability of the Persian precludes the necessity of any attempt at realism on the stage, and thus, while facilitating the expression of approval and disapproval, swamps the self-critical faculty, and creates a uniformly low standard of literary excellence. There is an entire absence of illusive effect in the dramatic accessories; and though here and there we find evidence of a feeling for æsthetic unity, all artistic propriety seems to be sacrificed to the attainment of barbaric magnificence.13 A vague and inharmonious

12 The Persian music, which, as in all religious drama, heightens the effect produced by the representation, is of a very simple character, though the principal rôles are highly ornamented, and therefore necessitate considerable execution on the part of the performer. In the beginning of European musical history, and at the time of the Crusades, there can be little doubt that many of its salient features were borrowed from the East; Persia, for example, had developed a system analogous to that in use at the present day. Since then, however, she has made little progress in the musical art, and there, as throughout the East, the study of harmony is not practised.

13 The poles which surround the stage are covered with skins of wild beasts, and adorned with warlike weapons.

splendour reigns throughout the tazyah; and the actors-even the Prophet himself, who was wont to attire himself in the coarsest garments are clad in the costliest and most brilliant apparel. There is no attempt to maintain the illusion of entries and exits, or differences of place and time; a distance of miles is represented by steps; an actor never quits the sakoo, but only withdraws to the side. A mark of distinction is conferred on the hero of the particular scene enacted by his being permitted to sit on a couch by the side of Husain. No scenery is possible, since there is no background to the stage. Chopped straw represents the sand of the desert, which is poured on the head in sign of grief, and a copper basin the waters of the Euphrates. It is evident that in a theatre where half the audience are gazing at the actor's back the finer touches of acting would be wasted, and it is curious to remark that, when we are spectators of acting in such or similar conditions, our intellect does. not demand a greater artistic perfection than that of which the circumstances admit. This truth lies at the bottom of all progress in the histrionic art. We are not, therefore, astonished that the actors of the tazyah do not pretend to the science of the professional artists of Europe, but possess as their sole accomplishments grace of action and resonance of voice, which, combined with a natural simplicity and earnestness, render deeply affecting, even to persons ignorant of their language, the woes of the Family of the Tent.' They even carry their parts in their hands and refer to them when their memory fails them. It is with no feeling for art or verisimilitude that the Sheea attends the Muharram celebration; he is no rational being at this season, merely a fanatic. He goes to weep. Husain, he believes, 'will intercede in favour of every one who has shed a single tear for him.' The representatives of the brutal Syrian soldiers themselves burst into weeping as they insult the holy Imams. From the earliest times the moollas have preached the value of such an offering. Tears so shed were collected by the priests as a sovereign remedy against death. The sole object, therefore, of the dramatists is to elicit the passionate music of tears.'

Les sanglots (says M. Chodzko), tout aussi contagieux en l'Orient que le rire chez nous, devinrent de plus en plus bruyants et finirent par le cri spontané ou, pour mieux dire, par un rugissement d'un millier d'individus qui nous saisit d'effroi. No artistic consciousness can reside in the minds of people so irrational as to incur the risk of death by suffering their bodies to be buried in the earth in order to represent the decapitated Imams, and who cannot restrain themselves from lynching the impersonators of the enemies of their country. Fanaticism is a dangerous, if not an insuperable, antagonist to any refining artistic influence, since it lacks, 14 In the little town of Damawand a fight annually takes place in which several persons are killed. But whoever dies during the Muharram goes to Paradise.

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and militates against, the reflective quality without which progress is impossible.

The only question which seems now to remain for discussion is, whether the fanaticism will, or can, ever be toned down into the moderation requisite for development. Professor Lewis Campbell has truly said: 'Intense participation in a great cause, as in Dante and Milton' is but little favourable to purely dramatic

art.'

· ...

We find an upper class supporting the representation of the Passionplay, not so much from motives of patriotism as from a selfish desire to obtain popularity. It is possible that this feeling, which is entirely removed from fanaticism, may, first from the necessity of rivalling contemporaries, next from a true feeling for art engendered by such rivalry, familiarise the lower classes with the moderation necessary for the development of self-criticism. It may be, too, that the merchants who preside over the practical working of the Muharram celebrations will form for themselves a higher ideal, based on the master-pieces of foreign literatures, and so influence the people. But this is mere speculation. We must, however, signalise the absence of a great central metropolis which, in the case of all great European dramas, has always furnished a focussing centre and school of improvement. At present we can only console ourselves by pointing to the beautiful mosques at Koom, Ispahan, and other Persian cities, to the classic ruins of Persepolis, and—if the conjecture of Major Murdoch Smith be correct-to the famous Alhambra itself, as evidences of the artistic capabilities of Persia. The Muharram Play is not the cry of a people raising itself from oppression; it is not the outcome of regret for greatness that is past. The legends of the pre-Mohammedan kings and of the Persian Hercules have no place therein. It is a passive complaint for the misery of the present, the dæmon of a people that has discovered its own degradation. Art cannot exist on grief alone: it requires quiescence for its development, and quiescence implies a degree of prosperity. If we wish, therefore, to prognosticate favourably with regard to the drama in Persia, we must forget that its mosques and minarets are tumbling to decay, and that its precious tiles are trampled under foot by the passing traveller; we must forget the encroachments of the desert and the ravages of famine, and remember that it is still the desire of great nobles and influential ministers to leave behind them public works as memorials, and that the Persian may in the few weeks of spring, at Ispahan where nature assumes her loveliest garb, and around the classic walls of Shiraz, amongst the shubberies of cypress and orange with their beautiful latticework of light and shade, and their long and lovely vistas terminated by lordly mountains, together with the vision of possible happiness and content, store up materials for a literature

that will deal with the bright as well as the gloomy side of life.

The great danger is, that a vicious and effete administration may not survive to yield gradually to the pressure exerted upon it by an expanding and unanimous people, but may be swept away by a sudden invasion or revolution; and that the palace of art, its foundations undermined, should collapse, and the work of an age of peace be swept away by the violence of a moment.

LIONEL TENNYSON.

THE CHILD-CRIMINAL.

WHAT shall we do with the child-criminal?'

This is the unanswered question of the day. Our Home Secretary, alive to its momentous import and the urgent need that it should be soon and satisfactorily answered, has recently invited opinions and suggestions respecting it from numerous quarters; but up to the present moment efforts appear to have been for the most part futile to find the true solution of as difficult a problem as ever yet perplexed humanity.

'How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him?' anxiously asks the politician of the philosopher, and the philosopher, in his turn, of the philanthropist. But the philosopher's brain, though exercised profoundly, has not yet yielded satisfactory response, and the heart of the philanthropist, stirred to its depths, sighs only, 'It is not in me.'

One fact is indubitable, viz.: that letting the child-criminal alone now offers no security for his letting society alone hereafter. The quick-eyed, ragged urchin, who just now transferred some trifling article from the shop-window to his trousers pocket, will in a few years (if his present pilfering be not prevented) develop into the desperate burglar, who will find a dozen ways of intruding himself into your dwelling by any other entrance than its front door. The squalid child of severe Mother Street, driven by hunger-gnawings to commit a petty theft for the breakfast which his search among the refuse heaps in the gutter fails to furnish, will soon, if unbefriended and unfed, master the easy rule of progression in crime. For example, a young acquaintance of ours, late in the Homerton Truant School, graduated, in a fortnight, from stealing twopence to taking a paraffin lamp, and from taking a paraffin lamp to driving off in a horse and cart not his own. And when, from constant practice, the child's nimble fingers have attained dexterity in the art of thieving, he will not only brag of his exploits among his young companions, but also initiate them in the tricks of his trade. Thus he becomes captain' of a gang of child-rogues, who drink in with avidity his thrilling tales of hair-breadth escapes from shopmen's and policemen's clutches, and eagerly covet similar experiences. Some

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