over the lines as if he did not know them by heart, and obtains at once a respectful silence. He begins to read, and the attention is profound. Clear, sonorous, musical, his voice rings out stanza after stanza, and the verses are undeniably good. He draws with minute, delicate touches a picture of a lonely life on the mountain, where no two houses stand together, where to live alone is to live in a desert; he paints the wild winter-storm which converts every dwelling into a prison and wraps the solitary in a double mantle of dreadful solitude. This it is to live alone. Then he turns the shield and shows "y Bwthyn bach tô gwellt ar gesail y Fron (the little thatched cottage in the lee of the hill)" ringing with cheerful sounds and laughter, and childish faces pressed with glee to the window to watch the tempest which, doubly cruel to the solitary, shuts them in but to a pleasant privacy of storm. And so with handsome tributes to the principal characters of the day, he swings along through some thirty verses, till he stops and draws breath in a profound silence, which is not interrupted, and which is to be taken as a great compliment.

The hard, laughing lines have smoothed out of the wrinkled, sunburned faces of the women; the men nod critically as the poet makes his points; and things fall into serious order at once. William Fron-wen steps forward to welcome the company as if they had just arrived and refreshments are offered. The next thing is to form the procession and set off to the church. At the head of the bridal procession walked the bridegroom with a supporter on each side. Then followed a merry train, and at the rear came the bride under guard of the groom's two most particular friends. Their duties will be explained presently.

The first farm we came upon after

reaching the road was Llidiartmaengwyn (the Gate of the White Stone). Here they were ready for us, and in a trice a ladder was run across the narrow road and braced firmly against the tree trunks. This brought the procession up, and there was no passing until the bridegroom had explained the importance of his errand that day and begged leave to proceed to his happiness. Then the barrier was withdrawn amid a shower of good wishes, and on we plodded again. Every place we passed had its obstructions ready, firpoles, larch-trees, gates, empty carts, anything that would block the track according to immemorial custom. The miller, coming up the mountain with a load of sacks, turned his horse across the way; an old woman, who had nothing better stretched a cord between the hedgerows; and the bridegroom won his way almost inch by inch with fervent entreaty. And what was the bride doing? She was still under the influence of invincible coyness, and every now and again made swift, sudden bursts for freedom. To forestall these was the business of the young fellows who had been detailed to march with her, and it was their bounden duty to deliver her safe and sure at the church. At every place where the march was obstructed they had to be doubly on the alert. The people there did all they could to assist the bride to escape. Doors were opened for her to dart into, and instantly slammed in the face of the pursuers and held against them until they forced their way in and brought her out again in triumph. Somehow or other they always manage to bring her to the church-door and then the usual ceremony follows.

After this, arm-in-arm for the first, last and only time in their lives, the new-married couple, followed by their friends, return home to spend the day in simple revelry.

On the journey from church they

áre saluted by feux-de-joie, fired by young fellows who conceal themselves behind turf-stacks and hedges and discharge their guns rapidly as the happy couple pass.

Often enough the struggles of the bride to escape from her guardians are of the faintest, and more that an ancient tradition may not be shamed than intended to give real trouble. But at times it happens that a young lady of great spirit and strength has to be led, or rather dragged, to the altar, and then things are lively. Such a bride I saw not long since at the tail of a procession, and she played her part in a very sportsmanlike fashion. I came across the train quite by accident as it wound its way down the mountain, and for a moment wondered, for I had not heard there was a marriage afoot. Indeed, when they came nearer and I began to recognize many of them, I found them people from the other side of the mountain who, for some reason or other, were coming to the church on this slope. I stood aside on a little eminence to watch them pass, and just as I was cheerfully wishing them luck, the bride made a splendid burst for freedom. She was a fine, strapping wench, as strong as a horse, and in charge of two lathy lads. They had spent no easy time with her so far, for they were hot and red and one had a great dent in his hat. Her face was like the rising sun. Her hat hung over one ear, and her hair was loose. She made her coy flight just as she passed the mouth of a steep, stony path leading to the house of an acquaintance, and began it by driving the elbow of a thick muscular arm into the ribs of her right-hand guardian. Sending him spinning, she tore away from the other light-weight and rushed up the slope, her heavy nailed boots making the loose stones ring again as they flew smoking from her wild charge. At the head of the path a group of people roared a

welcome and promised a safe asylum. But the second lad, long and lean, was upon her in an instant, and grappled with her; up came his companion, and a third who had rushed to their assistance. Numbers won the day, and with a shrill shriek she gave up the unequal contest. Two of them took an arm each, the third pushed at her shoulders, and away they raced her back into place.

They had the business entirely to themselves. The bridegroom, a little, dried-up fellow, marched primly forward and never dreamed of turning his head; that would have been to doubt his friends. The rest of the procession followed his example, and were almost out of sight, dropping down the side of a steep glen, before she was restored to her former position.

After every marriage on the mountain a festive meeting is held called neithior. Its main object is not rejoicing, however, but a severely practical one. It is true that it is very merry, but if you attend bringing only a jovial face and a cheery laugh as your share of the entertainment, you will be looked on with a trifle more than coldness. It is intended to give the young couple a start in life, and the neighbors and friends crowd in with gifts in money or kind. It is the one feature of the ancient form of mar riage which is never neglected. Today many creep off to the Registry Office (that unromantic termination of a courtship) and cut away at a stroke the features already described; but the neithior is sacred. No impious finger is laid upon that, for by it you get something.

The neithior at Fron-wen after Margaret's marriage was more than ordinarily well attended, and achieved the distinction of being the best known for many years in the amount and value of contributions. This is a matter of great rivalry, and house vies with

house, on occasion of a

gathering friends from near and far, and heaping high the pile to the young folk's credit. You can find people on the mountain who have seen sixty years and more of wedded life, and will still recite promptly the amount their neithior yielded, every article which made it up, and full particulars of the donors. There are some who exaggerate; the amount has grown with the years; but they are promptly set straight. The parish is, after all, but one big family. The people are familiar with each other's affairs from all time. They know little, and care less, about the world outside. They have the dimmest idea of who the Sirdar may be, or what he is doing; the name of Dreyfus has no significance in their ears; but what Shinkin Ty'r Banc did fifty years ago-pat and precise comes that story, and the story is never to Shinkin's credit. The famous adage is reversed, and if ever he did a good deed sure it has been writ in the brown, swift-running water of our leaping mountain-brook and long ago washed out of sight and memory; but his slips, his failings are graven in his neighbor's memories as if cut in the hard, imperishable rock which crops up everywhere in their lean scanty pastures.

"The world's very censorious, old boy," said Captain Macmurdo to Rawdon Crawley; and here mountain and valley kiss each other, mud-walled cottage and Mayfair are one. You listen to the story about Shinkin Ty'r Banc and wonder a little; he seems to you SO quiet, so respectable, his hair touched with silver, his manner fine with a lofty and serene gravity, and you say, "When was that?" Your informant scratches among a patch of gray whisker, and reflects. After a while he hits the time. "All those years ago?" you say. "He's had time enough to alter." The other man laughs a laugh with a snarl in it. "Not he," he growls; "he

When I reached Fron-wen I found the big, low-roofed kitchen full of the young folks of the mountain, laughing, talking, waiting for their turn to deliver their presents, and keeping a keen eye on what was given in.

At a small round table set near the great dresser was Rhys, the inviter. It is part of his duty to be secretary to this meeting, for the gifts are not handed over with thanks and there an end. Far from it; Rhys had a book before him, and pen and ink. In the book he wrote with laborious scratching, the name, the address, the amount, of every giver and every gift. This record serves as a guide, were guidance needed, to the names of those who were present and who expect, in their turn, to be assisted when their neithior arrives; it is a sort of mutual insurance arrangement. Some lay down money, and Rhys counts this carefully, places it in a blue china bowl at his side, dabs his pen in his mouth (his writing is generally done with a pencil which he sucks to blacken the stroke), splutters, takes another dip of ink, and the record is made. Some bring offerings of tea and sugar, and already a huge mound of bags of sugar and packets of tea has accumulated, piled neatly on the great table under the little deeply-set window. I dropped into an empty corner of the big settle to observe the scene for awhile.

Just round the corner of the settle were Margaret's mother and a crony. They were watching the proceedings

with eyes like gimlets; there was no need of a book for them to post themselves with regard to givers and gifts. "Ay," groaned the bride's mother, "look there, now, Siani Pen yr Allt. As sure as I stand here, she's brought six pounds of sugar."

"One and three halfpence," chimes in the crony.

"A shilling!" whispers the indignant mother. "You can get it for a shilling in the town and I saw her fetching it. And it isn't twelve months since we gave her a pound of tea, the very best, two-and-six it was."

"Och gwae," drags out the other, a long, hoarse, horrible guttural, as if such meanness grated upon her very soul.

After the thrifty Siani came the carpenter with a chair, the weaver with a blanket as stiff as a board, an old woman with an earthenware water-jar of such shape as Rachel might have carried to the well, then tea, and sugar and money again. Rhys was a busy Macmillan's Magazine.

man that evening. Beside him stood the bride, breathless with repeating thanks, her high-pitched scream of "Diolch yn fawr i chwi, O, diolch yn fawr i chwi, (many thanks to you, oh many thanks to you)," rattling along as steadily as water over a mill-wheel; and the bridegroom looked as useless and smiled as foolishly as a man in such a position generally does.

I stayed an hour or more, and then an irresistible desire for the clean, strong, sweet air of the mountain outside came over me. But as I went, William Fron-wen drew me aside to whisper proudly that already his daughter's neithior had easily beaten anything of recent years. Up to that moment they had received thirty-six and a quarter pounds of tea, a hundred and seventeen pounds of sugar, two quilts, three blankets, a couple of chairs, a settle, a cupboard, earthenware and crockeryware by the pile, five hens, a little round table, and nearly twenty-eight pounds in money! John Finnemore.

The first thing to strike a reader of Mr. Phillips's play who knows his Josephus is the simplicity with which the poet has followed the Jewish historian. Not only are the main incidents, such as the murder of Aristobulus and his sister Queen Mariamne, with their motives and consequences, taken direct from history, but minor incidents also, such as the jealousy of Herod's mother and sister, roused by Mariamne's contempt for their insignificant origin, the betrayal of Herod's confidence by Sohemus, the spicing of the wine-cup, and the cool reception Mariamne gives to her lord on his return from the interview with Octavian, are transferred by the poet from the historian's pages. To say this is not to derogate from Mr. Phillips's originality, but to insist upon it. Just as truly as Shakespeare's play, Coriolanus, was implicit in North's Plutarch, so Mr. Phillips's play was implicit in Josephus. But in the one case, as in the other, it required the eye of genius to discover it. Now that the play has been written, it seems wonderful that no one should have written it before, for many poets have gone in search of passion; and Josephus lays stress upon the enthusiastic and almost ungovernable nature of Herod's passion for Ma riamne, and in his narrative, as in the play, the episode closes with the King's temporary madness. Here, however, at last is the play; and readers are likely to confirm the judgment of playgoers that the play is a good one.

We have mentioned Shakespeare as a parallel to Mr. Phillips for the ease with which he found his tragedies in history. But Mr. Phillips's play is not

Herod: A Tragedy. By Stephen Phillips. London: John Lane. [4s. 6d.]

for all that, a play upon the Shakespearian model. There is no rich com bination of plot and underplot, no "God's plenty" of characters suggesting the crowded stage of the real world; person after person satisfying us with their admirable humanity as long as they are upon the stage, and giving place to others as thoroughly satisfactory and human. Mr. Phillips has gone for his model to Shakespeare's predecessor, Christopher Marlowe; and we think he was wise in so doing; as indeed the event has proved him successful. Our tragic stage needs rebuilding; and in building one must begin at the beginning. Before it is possible to deal with a conflict of pas sions it is well for a dramatist to makesure that he can handle with success a single great passion; and as Marlowe preluded with Dr. Faustus, though adverse fate left the more complicated fugue to his successor, so Mr. Phillips, we hope, has only preluded with King Herod, and may give us in time his more elaborated harmonies.

In Herod Mr. Phillips has clearly marked the various strains that made up that, in a sense, "great" as well as terrible figure. He shows us the genius both for war and for art, that made of him an intrepid and adventurous soldier, and in time of peace the builder of cities and temples and amphitheaters; he shows us the diplomatist with genius enough to employ the most direct and simple methods; the statesman who knew when a man was dangerous and must be removed and who did not shrink from the task; the King who devoted himself absolutely to his people's interests; and beneath all this the untamed Idumean of the desert, with his passions at fever-heat, ready at any