As to the Miracle play, we look upon it as a most successful reproduction, or rather image, of those strange religious shows which were long represented in the Romish churches all over Europe, and which, though somewhat altered in their form, are not yet abolished in some parts of the Continent. Mr Longfellow, whilst preserving so much of the spirit of the old Mysteries as to convey an adequate idea of their grotesqueness, has lent to this composition a charm which none of the old plays possess. Those who are anxious to ascertain what a Miracle play really was, will find a fair specimen in the first volume of Hawkins' _English Drama_. The general reader may, however, content himself with Mr Longfellow's production, which is, in many points of view, remarkable. The scenes represented are principally taken from the Apocryphal Gospels, attributed to St Thomas, of the Infancy of our Saviour--which gospels were long read in some of the Nestorian churches. Here, again, Mr Longfellow has been charged with impiety, as if, by his own invention, he were supplementing Scripture. He has done nothing of the kind. He has simply reproduced, in a peculiar form, a legend or tradition well known in the middle ages; and if this license is to be prohibited, what imaginative or poetical author who has treated of sacred subjects can escape? Milton has sinned in this respect far more deeply than Longfellow. But we really do not think it necessary to pursue this subject further. We must not, any more than the travellers, loiter on the road, therefore we pass over the scenes at the Convent of Hirschau, as also that in the neighbouring nunnery. We confess that the carousal of the monks, in which Lucifer bears a share, (for the fiend continues to travel in disguise along with his expected victim,) does not strike us as being happily conceived. It is coarse, and we are sorry to say, vulgar; though it may be, doubtless, that such things were often said and enacted within convent walls. But the poet is bound to use a certain degree of discretion in his choice of materials, and in his manner of setting them forth. We think some of the ribaldry in this scene might have been spared with advantage, without in the least injuring that contrast between outward profession and real purity which the author evidently intended to draw; and we would urge upon Mr Longfellow the propriety of revising in future editions the passages to which we refer, as tending in no way to promote the strength, whilst they undoubtedly diminish the pleasure which we receive from other parts of the drama. The scene in the nunnery, in which the Abbess Irmengarde relates to Elsie the tale of her youthful attachment, and the preference which she gave to Walter of the Vogelweide over Prince Henry of Hoheneck, when both of them were her suitors, is very sweetly written, and entirely in keeping with the times.