pressions he conveys to the gazer. Into the very centre of the rigid monastic life, which has renounced the world, the flesh, and the devil, Veronese daringly introduces all three, clothing them with a splendour and a fascination that might well strike discontent into the mind of some halfhearted brother whose thoughts have not yet set wholly heavenwards. Perhaps, and fortunately in this case, the danger was more apparent than real. It is not often that we look at the pictures in whose company we live, and possibly many a monk who had dined daily during a score of years beneath the Feast of Gregory had scarce ever raised his eyes above his plate and cup to the glowing canvas at the end of the room, and could barely recall an incident of the

scene.

As the eye wanders over the multitudinous detail of this wealthy canvas, revelling in its colour, stimulated in every nerve by its exuberant vitality, you realise to the full that here as in the other great supperpictures by Veronese, the sumptuous Marriage of Cana in the Louvre, perhaps his masterpiece, the Feast in the House of Levi at Venicethe subject has been merely the most transparent pretext for all this magnificence.

This feast is actually a banquet of modern date, the guests Venetian nobles and grandees of the painter's day, the scene a gallery in a Venetian palace. All Veronese's usual paraphernalia are here, pages in gold brocade carrying in the meats, spectators on a balcony behind, the monkey, the dog, the small spaniel held by a boy in striped tunic and trunk-hose, even to the cat whose green eyes gleam out from under the table. It was for such frivolities that Paolo fell under the suspicion of the dreaded Inquisition, and was called

before it to answer to certain charges brought against his orthodoxy. Had he not introduced into a picture in which Christ and many holy personages were present a number of German mercenaries, hated Lutherans, dogs of heretics, together with such unworthy objects as buffoons, dwarfs, and other fooleries? Was not one of the holy apostles represented in the act of picking his sacred teeth with a common fork? The poor painter, puzzled at these grave charges, and hopelessly out of touch with his inquisitors' point of view, tried vainly to explain that his motives were æsthetic and not religious, either in the way of orthodoxy or heterodoxy. A blank space in the composition must be filled, and what more decorative than the inventions he had chosen for the purpose. It was fortunate

for him that he escaped with a reprimand and an order to remove the obnoxious figures at his own expense. To a painter whose whole preoccupation was with colour, sunlight, and joyous life, such hairsplitting must have appeared little less than idiotcy.

In spite of all the vicissitudes it has undergone, for in 1848 it was torn to pieces by unappreciative Austrian soldiers, the picture is in good condition, though some of its splendour of colour has vanished for ever. The feast is held at a long table spread under a loggia. The Pope is sitting in the centre, the stranger pilgrim on his right lifts the cover of a dish which he holds. One of the cardinals, seated on the nearer side of the table, seems to suspect something unusual in the guest, for he gazes intently through his heavy rimmed spectacles across the table at Christ. In one corner of the picture a delightful incident occurs. A crowd of sturdy beggars, old men and women with babies in their arms, have assem

bled to witness the repast. One of the guests, a young man, filled with compassion surreptitiously passes a loaf of bread behind the pillar to the nearest suppliant. For the rest, the scene is one of movement, bustle, and unsurpassed magnificence. As you turn from it to leave the dreary refectory, you feel an inevitable pang of regret that all this splendour should be enacted day by day to bare walls and hollow-sounding floor. Yet there is unending pleasure to the wanderer in the finding of such a jewel off the beaten track, and the great Paolo can well afford that one of his treasures should be hidden under a bushel since he has strewn his gems so lavishly over the walls and ceilings of Venice.

So in great contentment you retrace your steps through the gaudy church, where the droning still persists, and emerge again into the brilliant sun shine of the Italian afternoon. you swing down the avenue, your curiosity satisfied, your expectations

As

fulfilled, you note the beggar-boys lying about the arcade in fantastic coils of brown legs and arms; the old women and girls bending to pick up the chestnuts which, smooth and glossy brown, strew the ground, the stalls with their motley assortment of trumpery, the lemonade-sellers crouched beside their burnished copper bowls. Stalwart pilgrims mounted on little donkeys descend the hill at a smart jog-trot; their piety satisfied, they forget the story of Baalam and his works. Indeed the whole pilgrimage is little more than a pleasant summer fairing, with the additional spice of some substantial but not too definite advantage in the hereafter. And standing on the green sward at the foot of the hill, you take a last glance at the gay group of buildings clustered on its summit, with feelings of gratitude for a system which calls its votaries to sacrifice in such pleasant places. M. H. WITT.

THE marionette theatre, although once extremely popular both in France and England, never attained in those countries to the position which it long occupied in Germany. French and English actors of the seventeenth century both found reason to be jealous of their insidious little competitors; but during the long agony of the Thirty Years' War and the period of depression which followed it, the mimic actors of the German puppet-show had few rivals, and the German dramatic instinct seemed to find full satisfaction in the marionette stage. The epochs which produced Shakespeare and Jonson, Corneille and Molière, would have been blank pages in the history of German literature had it not been for the hymns into which the poetic genius of the age breathed a wistful beauty which gives them a place of their own among the spiritual songs of the world.

The art which ended in the wandering showman's booth at a country-fair began life as the handmaid of religion; the marionette principle was first utilised (in Europe) to animate the sacred images which were adored at the altars of the Church. In remembrance of its high descent, the marionette plays were for a long time mainly of Biblical origin. "I know this man well," says Autolycus in THE WINTER'S TALE. "He hath been a process-server, a bailiff; then he compassed a motion [a puppet-show] of the Prodigal Son." "When God gave Adam reason,' " says Milton in the AREOPAGITICA, "He gave him freedom to choose; he had else been a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he

is in the motions." The marionettemanager became by degrees very largeminded and fairly ambitious in his choice of plays. Classical or romantic, antique or modern, Medea, Alcestis, Mariana or the Female Brigand, Judith and Holofernes, Don Juan, Le Malade Imaginaire, anything was acceptable provided that it permitted the introduction of a good moral and a laughable clown. The Life and Death of St. Dorothea was a special favourite on account of the ingenious mechanism which permitted the martyr to be neatly decapitated in full view of the audience, in happy contrast to the shifts to which the regular drama is reduced at such a crisis. But of all the plays on this mimic stage THE TRAGEDY OF DOCTOR FAUST held the place of honour.

The date of the marionette FAUST is unknown; it is perhaps not much younger than Marlowe's FAUST which was played at Dresden in 1626 by the English comedians, and may have inspired the German dramatist. Nor do we know for certain whether the play was originally written for the miniature stage or whether the writer aimed higher and missed his mark. The traditional text made its first appearance in print not much more than fifty years ago, and it must have been considerably modified since it left the hands of its unknown author not later probably than the middle of the seventeenth century. A special interest attaches to this old German drama of which there are several versions; it was not played at Strassburg exactly as it was played at Augsburg, at Ulm, or at Cologne, but