the examinations are completed, the devils are called in, and, while they are not allowed to annoy the good children, they are permitted to tease the naughty ones as much as they like. The performance passes at last into an hour of jollity and romping. The children having returned to their own homes, and said their prayers previously to going to bed, place dishes or baskets upon the window-sills, with their names written within them, for the presents which St. Nicholas is to bring.
Mithraism.—The religion of Mithra, or, rather, ideas and forms connected with it, played an important part in the thought of the early centuries of the Christian era, yet little is known of Mithraism at the present time, and the discussions of it are largely speculative. It has been generally treated as having been a mere form of sun worship; but that accomplished antiquary, Mr. J. A. Farrer, has expressed the belief that it was at bottom the worship of Ormuzd, the Persian conception of the Deity, which answers exactly to the Jewish conception of Jehovah. While we may never know what its actual rites or mysteries were, it is evident that they enforced a high and severe standard of morality through a symbolism which now seems ridiculous. Candidates for initiation went through some twelve or, perhaps, eighty trials of physical endurance, by fire, water, fasting, etc., in order to present themselves holy and free from passion. They passed through several degrees, and were called, according to their sex or advancement, lions, hyenas, ravens, eagles, and hawks. There were ceremonies of baptism and absolution, an oblation of bread and water, and a teaching of the resurrection. Symbolical representations were made of the passage of emancipated souls through the fixed stars. But little more is known of the service. The interesting point in the Mithraic rites is their resemblance, as attested by the Christian fathers, to the early Christian rites. This fact suggests a question which controversialists have not neglected—whether the Christians borrowed from the Mithraists or the Mithraists from the Christians, or whether the coincidences are casual. The mysteries of Mithra have also their analogues in the mysteries of ancient India; and it may be that the Christians yielded to the temptation to compromise in order to make the passage of conversion easier; as it is tolerably clear that they did in the appointment of a number of the church festivals. While these resemblances and relations must make this religion a matter of perpetual interest, its origin and nature are in fact "little less obscure than the caverns in which its mysterious rites were once performed. . . . That it was monotheistic in doctrine, and taught the belief in a future life; that it inculcated a code of morality, in which truth, justice, and temperance formed the principal virtues, is all that at present seems clear from the scanty evidence that remains of it."
The Sensations of freezing to Death.—The question, Is death from intense cold painless? is answered by a writer in "Chambers's Journal" from his own experience one day in the Pennine Alps. After a hot July climb to the snow-line, in which the traveler went out of his way in frequent excursions for beautiful objects, and did not eat, the sunset and the rapid change to intense cold took place. Poorly prepared to endure the transition, the writer felt a peculiar appearance in all bis surroundings. "Everything looked hazy to my vision—even the snow and the rocks lying about looked as if enveloped in a fog, although the afternoon was beautifully clear. Then I felt that I must sit down and enjoy it; but the guide's flask of Kirschwasser set me going again. Very soon, however, the former feeling returned; but the same treatment temporarily recovered me. At last I took to stumbling along, fell down several times, and at length could not help myself. My companions urged me in vain to arouse to one more effort; but it was useless." Two monks from the hospice were brought to the rescue, and they and the guide "took me in hand, and, shaking me up, made my hands clasp a belt round the guide's waist, and each of the monks took an arm," and thus pulled him through the seven and a half miles to the hospice. "The sensations of that journey, during occasional gleams of consciousness," the writer continues, will never be erased from my mind. Is there such an essence of ecstatic delight as elixir
