Taken as a whole, the craft cycle possesses the significance, continuity, and finality requisite to dramatic art; taken in its parts or pageants, however, it presents to the modern reader the appearance of a mosaic, an historical panel picture, or stereopticon show. I set down these words, "the modern reader," because I do not believe that the audience of contemporaries was aware of any break in the sequence of the collective spectacle. This histrionic presentment of the biblical narrative lacked neither motive nor method to the generations of the ages of belief. For them the history of the world was thus unrolled in episodes the opposite of disconnected,--each a hint or sign or sample, a type or antitype of the scheme of salvation, which was itself import and impulse of all history. No serious scene, but was confirmation or prophecy. Characters, institutions, and events of the Old-Testament drama had their _raison d'être_ not only in themselves but in the New Testament antitype which each in turn prefigured. No profound theological training was needed to comprehend each symbol and its significance, to esteem all as centring in the Person of history, in the sacrifice and atonement. And still it is largely because historians have failed to appreciate the scriptural training of our ancestors that they have unfairly emphasized the episodic nature of the miracle cycles, at any rate of the English. The integral quality of the English cycle is infinitely superior to that of the French; and the separate plays are more frequently artistic units. This is due, among other things, to facts long ago pointed out by Ebert.[28] The smaller stage in England, which in turn restricted the scope of the play, made it impossible to split up the action into two or more parallel movements, such as frequently occupied the stage in France. The scene, moreover, was in England limited to earth, save when the plot expressly required the presentation of heaven or hell. It very rarely required all three at once. The conduct of the English play is therefore less dependent upon the supernatural, and the persons bear a closer resemblance to actual human beings. Neither plot nor character is distracted by the irresponsible intrusion of devils, whereas these, idling about the French stage, frequently turned the action into horse-play,--if the fool (likewise absent from the English miracle) had not already turned it into a farce out of all relation to the fable. The comic element in the English play had to exist by virtue of its relation to the main action or not at all. It was therefore compelled to conquer its position within the artistic bounds of the drama. The comic scenes of the English miracle should accordingly be regarded, not as interruptions, nor independent episodes, but as harmonious counterpoint or dramatic relief. Those who have witnessed in recent times the reproduction of the _Secunda Pastorum_ at one of the American