Another curious feature of the Hindoo drama was the absence of scenery, the plays being mostly represented in the open air, the courts of palaces, etc. The great advantage which the modern performer derives from fine scenic effects was entirely wanting. Changes of scene could be indicated only in the text, by minute descriptions of the new locality, thrown into the mouths of the speakers and left for the audience to fill out and remember. No shifting of scenes, for instance, as with us, would denote the entrance of one of the characters from out-doors into a drawing-room; but the personage entering, either in a soliloquy or in colloquy with some other, would immediately call attention to every little point—the threshold, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the doors, the windows, the furniture—and the glowing fancy of his hearers would at once picture the scene as vividly as if it stood before them in reality. The proprieties were strictly observed. To represent a death scene would have been intolerable; nor only so, but in the earlier and purer days no dramatist would introduce before his audience a scene of violence, eating, sleeping, or the performance of the marriage ceremony. A charming love-scene in the Sakoontalâ breaks off just at the critical moment when the hero and heroine are about to interchange a token of affection; yet the embrace does not appear always to have been repugnant to the Hindoo ideas of delicacy. As to the date of the dramas that have been mentioned, they are supposed to have been written during the first ten centuries of the Christian Era; but here, as in the case of the epics and lyrics, we are left to conjecture. Could we know more certainly what times they reflect, our pleasure in perusing them would be complete. TALES AND FABLES. India has long enjoyed the reputation, and not without reason, of having been the favorite home of fairy-tale and fable. From her storehouse of fictions, many waifs have crept into the literatures of both Europe and Asia, and striking the popular taste have attained wide currency. Tongues have changed, dynasties have fallen; but these stories by unknown hands still live in the nursery, influencing the pliant minds of the children of to-day as they have done those of the last twenty centuries. The Sanscrit has two great collections of fables,—the Pankatantra, _Five Stories_ (more properly _Five Sections_); and the Hitopadesa, _Friendly Advice_, a charming compilation from the former. The Hitopadesa, translated into many languages, has almost rivalled in circulation the Bible itself. In the following fable, selected from “the Friendly Advice,” will be seen the germ of La Fontaine’s charming imitation, “the Milkmaid and the Pitcher of Milk;” both point the same moral as our own cautionary proverb, “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.” THE STUPID BRAHMAN.