CHRISTMAS NIGHT IN BETHLEHEM. 
389 
There was something intensely brutish and disgusting in 
the whole spectacle. I could not but think that it w T as rank 
blasphemy, this exhibition of pretended divinity in a miser- 
able wax image ; a thousand times more barbarous than the 
heathenish rites of savages. The great fat monks, in their 
coarse sackcloth, with their shaven heads and bare feet; the 
sweat standing in big drops on their faces ; their eyes rolling 
wildly in their heads; their hoarse chants grating harshly 
upon the air; the lustful expression with which they turned 
from the altar, and on their bended knees gazed into the 
faces of the women, presented a scene too sadly impressive 
ever to be forgotten. 
At the hour of twelve, they lifted with awful looks the 
tawdry babe from its resting-place on the altar, and held it 
up for the multitude to gaze upon; and then they bore it off 
in clouds of incense, through long winding passages, and de¬ 
scended into the cave, and laid it down upon a rock ; and the 
wax candles cast a pale and ghastly light upon it, and as it 
lay there with its round glass eyes staring at them, they fell 
prostrate and worshiped it, and chanted, and moaned, and 
wept at the feet of the panting crowd. Again they rose, and 
with hot, blood-shot eyes, scowled malignantly upon the her¬ 
etics that pressed down upon them to see the strange spec¬ 
tacle ; and in the thickness of the foul atmosphere, and the 
gloom of the dark, reeking cavern, they looked slimy and 
monstrous, and I thought it was the most sickening exhibition 
of brutish superstition that the eye of man could behold. 
Parched with thirst and dazzled with the unceasing glare 
of lights thrust in my eyes for hours before, humiliated by the 
degrading spectacle, and sick at heart, I struggled out from the 
crushing mass, and groped my way up the winding passages 
to our quarters in the convent. I lay*down, my brain burn¬ 
ing with visions of monstrous and unholy rites, and,strove to 
sleep ; but, hour after hour, I started up and wondered what 
strange, unearthly sounds fell upon my ears; what fearful 
spectres were painted upon the air; what weight of horror 
lay like a night-mare upon my breast. Can it be, I thought, 
that—* 
