to-day, wearing wreaths and carrying banners and crowns of flowers; that others bear aloft the ‘cipher of Mary,’ the banner of the Immaculate Conception, baskets of roses, oriflammes, &c.; that twenty grown-up men parade the town with the ‘banner of the Sacred Heart,’ and that a party of young ladies, in white dresses fringed with gold, brave the heat and the dust, and crowd to do honour to the ‘Queen of Angels.’  A multitude with streamers and banners, a confusion of colour and gilding, passing to and from the churches all day; and at night, fire balloons, feu d’artifice, open theatres, and ‘general joy.’

Of one more ceremony we must speak, differing in character, but equally characteristic and curious.  We are in the country again, spending our days in sketching, or wandering amongst the hills; enjoying the ’perfect weather,’ as we call it, and a little careless, perhaps, of the fact that the land is parched with thirst, that the springs are dried up, and that the peasants are beginning to despair of rain.

We see a little white smoke curling through the branches of the trees, and hear in faint, uncertain cadence, the voices of men and children singing.  Presently there comes up the pathway between two lines of poplars, a long procession, headed by a priest, holding high in the air a glittering cross; there are old men with bowed heads, young men erect, with shaven crowns, and boys in scarlet and white robes, carrying silver censers; there is a clanking of silver chains, a tinkling of little bells, and an undertone of oft-repeated prayer.  The effect is startling, and brilliant; the sunlight glances upon the white robes of the men, in alternate stripes of soft shadow and dazzling brightness, the wind plays round their feet as they march heavily along, in a whirl of dust which robs the leaves of their morning freshness; whilst the scarlet robes of the children light up the grove as with a furnace, and the rush of voices disturbs the air.  On they come through the quiet country fields, hot and dusty with their long march, the foremost priest holding his head high, and doing his routine work manfully—­never wearying of repeating the same words, or of opening and shutting the dark-bound volume in his hand; and the children, not yet quite weary of singing, and of swinging incense-burners—­keeping close together two and two in line; the people following being less regular, less apparently enthusiastic, but walking close together in a long winding stream up the hill.

What does it all mean?  Why, that these simple people want rain on the land, and that they have collected from all parts of the country to offer their prayers, and their money, to propitiate the Deity.  Could we, but for one moment, as onlookers from some other sphere, see this line of creeping things on their earnest errand, the sight would seem a strange one.  Do these atoms on the earth’s surface hope to change the order of the elements, to serve their own purposes?  If rain were needed, would it not come?