s nevertheless grand and inspiring.

On the walls of churches and conventos too are found pictures in
oil, often gloomy, full of tortures and death, as Spanish paintings
incline to be, yet essentially true art--pictures which it is to be
hoped will survive the inundation of American commercial energy. The
extract-of-beef advertisements and the varied "girls" of all pursuits
have found their way into the Philippines; and the Filipino, to our
sorrow be it said, takes kindly to them.

So far as the Filipino knows pageantry, it is the pageantry of the
Church. He knows no civic processions, no industrial pomp, such as
exploits itself in the Mardi Gras at New Orleans, or the Veiled Prophet
of St. Louis. He is even a stranger to the torchlight procession of
politics, and the military displays of our civil holidays. Neither
the Masons, nor the Knights Templars, nor the Knights of Pythias,
nor the Ancient Order of Hibernians, with their plumes and banners,
have any perceptible foothold in the Philippines. But in Holy Week and
certain other great festival or penitential seasons of the Church, the
great religious processions take place--floats sheathed in bunting
and decked with innumerable candles in crystal shades, carrying
either the altar of the Virgin or some of the many groups of figures
picturing events in the life and passion of the Saviour. Almost every
provincial family of wealth owns one of these cars, and the wooden
figures surmounted by wax heads, which constitute the group. At the
proper seasons the figures are clothed in gorgeous raiment decked
with jewels, and the car is put at the service of the Church for use
in the procession. The floats are placed about a hundred yards apart,
and between them the people form in two parallel lines, one on each
side of the street, every person carrying a lighted candle. When there
are twenty or thirty floats, and half as many bands, the glitter and
brilliancy of it all strikes even our satiated minds. What must it
be to the untravelled child of the soil?

When the Filipinos win a fight or an election, or fall heirs to
any particular luck, they do not express their enthusiasm as we do
in fire crackers, noise, and trades processions. They go sedately
to church and sing the Te Deum. And as we enjoy the theatre, not
merely for the play, but for the audience and its suggestions of a
people who have put care behind them and have met to exhibit their
material prosperity in silks and