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MIRACLES AND MORALITIES MIRAGE library three miracle plays in the Digby manu- scripts relating to the conversion of St. Paul, and two manuscripts containing the Cornish plays of the deluge, the passion, and the resur- rection. Only a single example of the New- castle mysteries remains, entitled "Noah's Ark, or the Shipwrights' Ancient Play," in which God, an angel, Noah and his wife, and the devil are the characters. According to Malone, the last mystery performed in England was that of Christ's passion in the reign of James I., but other authorities say they were acted in churches, and even on Sunday, as late as the reign of Charles I. They had, however, gen- erally ceased to be written from the time of John Bale (1538). The principal English mira- cle plays have been published, and no other portion of mediaeval literature is so strikingly marked by mingled drollery and solemnity. From the reign of Henry VI. miracles had been encroached upon and superseded by moral plays or moralities, in which abstract allegori- cal personages took the place of Scripture characters. The change was gradual. In one of the Coventry miracles the representatives of Veritas, Justitia, Pax, and Misericordia ap- pear in the parliament of heaven. Death and the mother of Death were successively add- ed ; and as these characters increased, Bibli- cal history fell into the background and was at length eliminated. Moralities reached their highest perfection in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII., though they subsequently exhibited greater complication and ingenuity. They contained two standing characters, the Devil and the Vice. The former, the leader of the Seven Deadly Sins, was made as hideous as possible, shaggy, bottle-nosed, and with a tail. He entered upon the stage crying " Ho, ho, ho ! " and his part consisted largely in roar- ing when castigated by the Vice. The latter, though represented as " most wicked by design and never good by accident," was chiefly em- ployed in belaboring the Devil. He was gen- erally dressed in a fool's habit, and the char- acter was gradually blended with that of the domestic fool. Moralities were abundant in France and England in the 15th and 16th cen- turies. The interludes of John Heywood mark the transition in England from them to legiti- mate tragedy and comedy. In Paris the devout buffoonery of the brethren of the passion gave offence and caused their suppression in 1547, and the company which purchased the H6tel de Bourgogne was enjoined to abstain from "all mysteries of the passion, or other sacred mysteries." In French the Moralite tressingu- liere et tresbonne des blaspkemateurs du nom de Dieu is one of the most celebrated ; and in English Skelton's "Magnyfycence," designed to show the vanity of worldly grandeur, in which the characters are Felicity, Liberty, Measure, Adversity, Poverty, Despair, Mischief, Good- hope, Redress, Circumspection, Perseverance, Fancy, Folly, and Crafty-conveyance. Mys- teries are still occasionally performed at sev- eral places in Europe, the most celebrated be- ing that of Ober-Ammergau, in southern Ba- varia, which is represented every tenth year. (See OBER-AMMERGATJ.) See Onesime Le Roy, Etudes sur les mysttres (Paris, 1837) ; Achille Jubinal, Myst&res inedits du quimieme siecle (2 vols., Paris, 1837); Heinrich Hoffmann, Fund- gruben fur Geschichte deutscher Sprache und Literatur (Breslau, 1830-'37); "The Chester Mysteries" (London, 1818); William Hone, "Ancient Mysteries Described" (1823); Tho- mas Sharp, "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries anciently Performed at Coventry "(Coventry, 1825); Collier, "History of English Dramatic Poetry " (3 vols., London, 1831) ; " Ancient Mysteries from the Digby MSS." (Edinburgh, 1835); "The Towneley Mysteries," published for the Surtees society (London, 1836); William Marriott, "A Collec- tion of English Miracle Plays" (Basel, 1838); Thomas Wright, "Early Mysteries, and other Latin Poems of the 12th and 13th Centuries" (London, 1838); Edwin Norris, "The Ancient Cornish Drama" (Oxford, 1859); and H. N. Oxenham, " Ober-Ammergau in 1871 " (Lon- don, 1871). A large number of the French miracles and moralities have been published separately, among which are Les ~blasphema- teurs (1831) and La rendition de Joseph (1835), both exact reproductions in form and type of the manuscripts in the national library. MIRAFLORES, Mannel de Pando, marquis of, a Spanish statesman, born in Madrid, Dec. 24, 1792, died there, March 17, 1872. He was Spanish ambassador at London (1834), at Paris (1838-'40), and at Vienna (1861), was presi- dent of the council of ministers in 1846 and 1863, and was seven times president of the senate, resigning in 1868. He wrote several works relating to the political history of his own times, the most important of which is Memorias para servir d la historia contempo- rdnea de los tsiete primeros anos del reinado de Isabel II. (2 vols. 8vo, Madrid, 1843-'4). MIRAGE (Fr., from Lat. mirari, to wonder), an appearance of distant objects in the air, as if standing in the sky, or reflected from the surface of water. It is produced by refraction in strata of different densities, decreasing or increasing rapidly, and sometimes by refrac- tion and reflection combined. The appear- ances are those which have received the gen- eral name of unusual refraction. The phe- nomena of mirage are said to have been first explained by Monge, while accompanying Bo- naparte's Egyptian expedition. There are sev- eral cases, of which the four following are the most common: 1, the mirage of the desert, which has the appearance of inverted objects, or reflections from the surface of water; 2, that which has the appearance of objects in- verted in the air, and which is seen over the surface of water ; 3, simple looming, when ob- jects appear to be elevated above their real level, but are not inverted, the appearance usually taking place over the surface of water ;