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But it seems, my dear sir, that your memory is as bad as your grammar; for instead of distress and suffering forcing itself up, you say, in the next breath, that "the most careless observer must be struck with the number of persons whom he hourly comes in contact with, whose haggard looks and care-worn brow serve as signs of the mental excitement reigning within." It seems, then, that instead of forcing themselves up, distress and suffering were running at large, free and unconfined, in every street, in all the habiliments of woe, showing themselves off to every passenger; so that Mr. Oldschool, instead of having them forced upon his imagination, had only to open his window, or step into the street, and behold them in reality in every direction.

But your next discovery is, that to persons laboring under distress and suffering, "the Theatre becomes a resort in the highest degree beneficial. It soothes the perturbed mind and calms the troubled spirit." Reader, ask yourself seriously one question-Would you, if you had seen the grave close over a beloved father or mother, sister or brother, while the tears of sorrow were yet wet upon your cheek, run to the Theatre to soothe such "distress and suffering," by listening to the licentious wit, or staring at the broad grins of a buffoon or a har

lequin! Or would you not rather retire to your closet, and soothe your sorrows by communing with your God, with your blessed Redeemer, who came "to wipe all tears from all eyes;" and who invites you, in the accents of divine love, to call upon him in the hour of calamity, and he will dry up your tears? But you are speaking, Mr. Nimrod, of distress and suffering, which many now feel from the want of money to support themselves; and what is equally dear to just men, to pay their honest debts; and this distress, and this suffering are to be relievedhow? By investing the little money they have left in such a manner as to get more, towards the payment of their honest debts? Oh! nobut by throwing it away upon an idle and insignifigant, if not extremely vicious, amusement!by bestowing it on the gentleman whom you style "Yankee Hill," for his ingenuity in the sublime art of blending, not grace and grammar, but "gravity and grins!" This is, indeed, "a new way to pay old debts!" and if, my dear sir, you do not deserve a patent for this discovery, I leave the public to say what you do deserve. If I had made such a discovery, I should have thought myself entitled at least to a new pair of ears, made after the fashion of those worn by a certain animal, remarkable for "gravity" if not for "grins."

But to your questions. To the first I answer, that the drama never has been, is not now, and never will-I believe never can-be well conducted. It never has been well conducted, because the right sort of persons have never been engaged in conducting it. It never will be well conducted, because the description of persons alluded to, can never be drawn off from more pure and elevated pursuits to assume the management of it: And it never can be well conducted, because it never can be, and consequently never will be, presented in a shape acceptable to sound christian philosophers; for the shape in which alone it can succeed, is that which will best please the mobocracy; and consequently the right sort of men to conduct it in a proper shape, will never stoop to conduct it in the only shape in which it can succeed. This is my answer to your first question.

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To the second-" Are not characters taken from every day life exhibited in their true aspect? I answer-NO. It was indeed the opinion of Cicero, that the Theatre should be the shadow or counterpart of human life; and in this opinion the heathen orator and philosopher was no doubt right, if we admit, which we never shall do, that the Theatre ought to exist; and a modern author has said that theatrical productions ought "to hold, as it were, the mirror up to NaE*

ture, to show Virtue her own features, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the Time his form and pressure ;" or, in other words, and by another modern-POPE-it is the province of the drama

"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius and to mend the heart;
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream from every age;
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wondered how they wept."

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All this, we are willing to grant, may have been the intention of the first dramatic writers and there was one reason, we as freely admit, for adopting this mode of denouncing vice and extolling virtue on the stage. The art of printing was then unknown, and to write and copy plays, or any other works, intended to lash vice or to laud virtue, in sufficient numbers to furnish copies for the multitude, was out of the question. Every thing written for the public instruction or amusement, was necessarily read or exhibited in public assemblies, at the Parthenon, the Theatre, or some other convenient place. But the art of printing has obviated the necessity of these public exhibitions, by bringing literary productions of every description to the firesides of all who wish to read and have the means to pay for them. But admitting that the Theatre

ought to exist; and that Cicero and his modern disciples have assigned to it the legitimate objects of its existence; then we say that these objects have never been accomplished. One of the first objects above named, "to raise the genius," is what no human institution ever did, or ever will do; for genius is the gift of God, an original creative power, neither to be raised nor lowered by any means; it may find new objects to display its powers upon; but the powers themselves will ever remain the same in the same individuals: And "to mend the heart," and to embolden "conscious virtue," men must go to a far more exalted school than the Theatre. It is indeed the veriest fiction of a poet's brain, that the heart is to be mended, and the conscience made courageous in virtue, by mingling in scenes of idleness, dissipation and debauchery; for such are, and long have been, the prominent scenes of the Theatre; where, if young men and women are to learn "to be what they behold,". they may become coxcombs and coquettes, dandies and demi-reps, tyrants and slaves; and, in short, any and every thing but angels in the shape of humanity! Turn, then, my young readers, I beseech you, if you wish to become "in conscious virtue bold," from the Theatre, as you would from the poisoned vale of Java, so long supposed to derive its deadly atmosphere from

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