o do in Roman Catholic countries by pictures. They
presented Mysteries, and often at great expense; and reliques of this
system still remain in the south of Europe, and indeed throughout Italy,
where at Christmas the convents and the great nobles rival each other in
the scenic representation of the birth of Christ and its circumstances. I
heard two instances mentioned to me at different times, one in Sicily and
the other in Rome, of noble devotees, the ruin of whose fortunes was said
to have commenced in the extravagant expense which had been incurred in
presenting the _praesepe_ or manger. But these Mysteries, in order to
answer their design, must not only be instructive, but entertaining; and
as, when they became so, the people began to take pleasure in acting them
themselves--in interloping--(against which the priests seem to have fought
hard and yet in vain) the most ludicrous images were mixed with the most
awful personations; and whatever the subject might be, however sublime,
however pathetic, yet the Vice and the Devil, who are the genuine
antecessors of Harlequin and the Clown, were necessary component parts. I
have myself a piece of this kind, which I transcribed a few years ago at
Helmstadt, in Germany, on the education of Eve's children, in which after
the fall and repentance of Adam, the offended Maker, as in proof of his
reconciliation, condescends to visit them, and to catechise the
children,--who with a noble contempt of chronology are all brought together
from Abel to Noah. The good children say the ten Commandments, the Belief,
and the Lord's Prayer; but Cain and his rout, after he had received a box
on the ear for not taking off his hat, and afterwards offering his left
hand, is prompted by the devil so to blunder in the Lord's Prayer as to
reverse the petitions and say it backward!

Unaffectedly I declare I feel pain at repetitions like these, however
innocent. As historical documents they are valuable; but I am sensible
that what I can read with my eye with perfect innocence, I cannot without
inward fear and misgivings pronounce with my tongue.

Let me, however, be acquitted of presumption if I say that I cannot agree
with Mr. Malone, that our ancestors did not perceive the ludicrous in
these things, or that they paid no separate attention to the serious and
comic parts. Indeed his own statement contradicts it. For what purpose
should the Vice leap upon the Devil's back and belabour him, but to
prod