tents, absolutely necessary where so many people had to remain three
days on the spot, would give a character to the assembly probably
more like what we hear of the so-called religious revivals in America
than of anything witnessed in more sober Europe."

But alas! I foresee the terrible unreality which would infect the whole
business. Very pretty, no doubt, and suggestive would be the picture of
the audience arrayed around the turf benches--

"In gradibus sedit populus de cespite factis--"

But one does not want an audience to be acting; and this audience would be
making-believe even more heroically than the actors--that is, if it took
the trouble to be in earnest at all. For the success of the experiment
would depend on our reconstructing the whole scene--the ring of entranced
spectators as well as the primitive show; and the country-people would
probably, and not entirely without reason, regard the business as
'a stupid old May game.' The only spectators properly impressed would be
a handful of visitors and solemn antiquarians. I can see those visitors.
If it has ever been your lot to witness the performance of a 'literary'
play in London and cast an eye over the audience it attracts, you too will
know them and their stigmata--their ineffable attire, their strange
hirsuteness, their air of combining instruction with amusement, their soft
felt hats indented along the crown. No! We may, perhaps, produce new
religious dramas in these ancient Rounds: decidedly we cannot revive the
old ones.

While I ponder these things, standing in the deserted Round, there comes
to me--across the sky where the plovers wheel and flash in the wintry
sunshine--the sound of men's voices carolling at an unseen farm. They are
singing _The First Nowell_; but the fourth Nowell--the fourth of the
refrain--is the _clou_ of that most common, most excellent carol, and
gloriously the tenors and basses rise to it. No, we cannot revive the old
Miracle Plays: but here in the Christmas Carols we have something as
artlessly beautiful which we can still preserve, for with them we have not
to revive, but merely to preserve, the conditions.

In a preface to a little book of carols chosen (and with good judgment)
some years ago by the Rev. H. R. Bramley, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and
well edited in the matter of music by Sir John Stainer, I read that--

"The time-honoured and delightful custom of thus celebrating t