“Such shame a mighty purpose led him to, Yet he shrinks not, but steadfast to this end Inevitable hath he come his way. A woman of my house was healed of him By kissing once the border of his garment. Take your King this, and say that as he dragged His cruel but chosen cross to his own doom Some comfort in its cooling web he found, And left a blessing in its pungent folds.” In the third scene of the drama, occurring in the afternoon, Abgar is informed of the Healer’s refusal to accede to his request, but in the presence of the queen and the attendants assembled in the royal garden, the letter of the Nazarene, promising healing and peace, is read to him by the returned envoy, and at length the linen, received from the hand of Berenis, and upon whose folds the healing power of Christ had been invoked, is given into the keeping of Abgar, through whose veins, as by the visible touch of the divine hand, the current of new life throbs and courses. The moment is fraught with intense reality, which Mr. Upson has kept as much as possible to such effects as transcend words. Just previous to the vital transformation Abgar has said: I have not yet resolved the Healer’s words Into clear meaning; but their crystal soon In the still cup of contemplation may Give up its precious drug to heal our cares,— but the supreme end was not wrought by contemplation, nor could its processes be resolved by analysis, or other words be found to proclaim it than the simple but thrilling exclamation: I feel it now! All through these withered veins I feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life! From this period the incidents of the drama develop with all the tensity of action which previous to this scene it has lacked, giving to the close a certain sense of crowding when compared with the slow movement of the previous scenes consisting chiefly of recital, well told, but with little to enact, making the work to this point rather a graphically related story than a drama. The incidents which come on apace in the latter part of the play have, to be sure, been foreshadowed in the earlier part, but one is scarcely prepared for the swift succession of events, nor for their bloody character after the sabbatical mood into which the earlier scenes of the work have thrown him. If the drama covered a longer period, giving time between scenes for the development of events, even though such development were but suggested by a statement of dates, the impression of undue haste in the climax would be obviated; but in the interval of one day, even though all events leading to the issue have been working silently for months or years, their culmination seems to come without due preparation to the reader’s mind, and one is swept off his feet by consummations with whose causes he had scarcely reckoned.