What kind of catechising call you this?"

I fancy you ask, rather sneeringly, as to our scenery and stage
adjuncts. Once, in the great court theatre at Munich, I saw Wagner's
_Rheingold._ The king was present, and all was done for splendour
that could be done in that centre of art. When the curtain rose, the
whole great river Rhine seemed to be flowing before you across the
stage, into the side of whose flood you looked as one looks through
the glass side of an aquarium. At the bottom were rocks in picturesque
piles; and, looking up through the tide to the top, as a diver might,
the spectator saw the surface of the river, with the current rippling
forward upon it, and the sunlight just touching the waves. Through the
flood swam the daughters of the Rhine, sweeping fair arms backward
as they floated, their drapery trailing heavy behind them, darting
straight as arrows, or winding sinuously, from bottom to top, from
side to side, singing wildly as the Lorelei. The scene changed, and
it was the depths of the earth, red-glowing and full of gnomes. And a
third time, after a change, you saw from mountain-tops the city which
the giants had built in the heavens for the gods,--a glittering dome
or pinnacle now and then breaking the line of white palaces, now and
then a superb cloud floating before it, until, at last, a mist seemed
to rise from valleys below, wrapping it little by little, till all
became invisible in soft gradations of vapoury gloom. I shall never
again see anything like that, where an art-loving court subsidises
heavily scene-painter and machinist; but for all that, is it wise
to have only sneers for what can be brought to pass with more modest
means? Our hall at Sweetbrier is as large as the Christ Church
refectory, and handsomely proportioned and decorated. A wide stage
runs across the end. We found some ample curtains of crimson, set off
with a heavy yellow silken border of quite rich material, which had