that about 400 have been relieved in the course of the year at a certain expense, and that 45 were on the list at one time. Admitting the last number as a general average, what are the legitimate consequences of this statement? That about one in five has been afflicted with sickness in the course of the year that they have received assistance from the dispensary at the trifling expense of three shillings each and that of these 2000 persons, on an average, a forty-fifth part, or one person out of 44 or 45, is constantly participating in the benefits of the Reading Dispensary. The friends of the institution, Sir, will thank you for this statement of facts, as they cannot desire to receive a clearer conviction of the advantage of this excellent charity. Your sophism consists in supposing that the patients who are sick in the course of the year, are all sick at the same time. When there are 400 pa- . tients at once on the dispensary books, your 'argument, that one in five is sick, will be valid. It cannot, however, be so previously.

The Theatre is another important subject on which you have offered your remarks; on the ill success of which you appear to be exercised with the most pungent affliction. What a lamentable thing is it, “ that the sons of Thespis should meet with so little encouragement, from a town, the inhabitants of which might certainly benefit from their exhibitions, that they are obliged to perform almost to empty benches!" And to what causes

can this failure be attributed?" O, to the bigotry of the Methodists, and the immoderate thirst for gain of every class of shop-keepers!"-Well, Sir, I shall here partly join issue with you. You attribute the comedians' want of success in Reading partly to the influence of religion, and partly to the covetousness of a certain class of inhabitants, which in many other places generally supports them. I consider their failure as owing solely to the former cause; as there certainly cannot be the least reason to libel the tradesmen of Reading with possessing a more immoderate love of money than the tradesmen of other towns where theatricals are encouraged and supported. I have the pleasure of being acquainted with some of the commercial men of Reading, who are men of liberality, and, if their conduct may be considered as a test of their principles, free from that excessively selfish principle of which you speak. If the bulk are similar to these, the tradesmen of Reading are certainly not eminently addicted to covetousness. It is, however, neither an impossible nor an improbable case, that an immoderate thirst for gain, and an immoderate partiality for the theatre, should unite in the same person. But without adducing arguments in relation to the cause of the ill success of the men for whom you so pathetically plead, it affords me pleasure to find there is no doubt of the fact you have stated. While you lament it as a matter of condolence with your

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correspondent, many will rejoice in it as a subject. of congratulation with those who are more intimately concerned in it-the inhabitants. For what is the stage? I reply, The nursery of vice and crime. To this you will probably retort, and exclaim--"The school of morality and virtue!" But let us proceed to argument. If the stage be the school of morality and virtue, how has it happened that the most immoral, dissolute, and vicious of mankind, have always been its firmest supporters and its warmest admirers? How comes it to pass, that those whose lives contradict almost every injunction of the decalogue, should be charmed with the beauty of virtue in the theatre? The stage, Sir, is one of the principal sources of every kind of immorality and dissipation; and as such, historians, philoso-, phers, moralists, and legislators, in almost all ages, have entered their protest against it. You argue that theatrical exhibitions were encouraged in the republic of ancient Greece. This is partly true, and partly not so. The people certainly encouraged plays, but the legislators and philosophers frequently condemned them. When Solon saw the dramas of Thespis performed, who has been considered as the inventor of tragedy, and who used to smear the faces of his actors with lees of wine, and to carry them from village to village in a cart which served them for a stage, that wise legislator expressed his dislike by striking the ground with his stick, and exclaiming, "I am

afraid that these poetical fictions and ingenious fancies will soon have a share in our public and private affairs!" He therefore restrained them by a law, which, however, was abrogated by a succeeding magistrate. Plato likewise condemned plays, because, said he, "they raise the passions, and pervert the use of them, and are of course dangerous to morality." Again: "The diversions of the stage are dangerous to temper and sobriety: they swell anger and desire too much. Tragedy is apt to make men boisterous, and comedy, buffoons. Those passions are cherished which ought to be checked virtue loses ground, and reason grows precarious; vice makes an insensible approach, and steals upon us in the disguise of pleasure. To the names of Solon and Plato may be added a constellation of Greek and Roman historians and moralists, who have, with one voice, condemned the stage.

But you seem to be ignorant, Sir, that arguments for plays in Christian countries cannot be deduced from the practice of the Greeks. Their tragedies are undoubtedly less exceptionable than those of the moderns; but they are not without lessons highly unfriendly to Christian morality. They inculcate pride, revenge, the love of false glory, ambition, and other passions which the religion of the Bible teaches us to mortify and subdue. You likewise seem not to know that the Greek drama was employed as an assistant

to the established mythology of the country. The Greeks were therefore consistent; for they inculcated the same lessons on the stage, which were communicated to the people in their temples. They guarded the theatre, as far as possible, from principles hostile to their religion or their morals. At least, this was the case in the purest ages of dramatic history. But what occasioned the ruin of Greece? Let us hear the testimony of a celebrated historian on the subject. "After the death of Epaminondas, the power of the commonwealth was broken. . . The valour even of the Athenians fell away. . . . . . They began to spend the public revenue, not, as heretofore, upon fleets and armies, but upon festivals and public diversions. They frequented the theatres with the most celebrated actors and poets, and visited the stage more frequently than the camp; bestowing their praises more on good versifiers than on good generals. By these means it came to pass that, during the idle disposition of the Greeks, the sordid and obscure name of the Macedonians began to emerge; and Philip, who had been kept as a hostage for three years at Thebes, and who had been instructed in the virtues of Epaminondas and Pelopidas, laid the kingdom of Macedonia as a yoke of slavery upon the necks of Greece and Asia."I cannot dismiss this part of my subject without reminding you, Sir, that the fathers of the church, with

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* Justin, lib. vi. cap. 9.