to guide the whole transaction. Nor is the jocund wit of public speakers, as occasionally used, an exception to this decorum; since, here is not the palpability or contagiousness by which the acting of moral evil is manifestly characterized, and since the capital intention is rigorously directed, not to pleasure, but to usefulness.

Still, morality, to some extent, is blended with the drama: In the very worst view of the stage this is fully to be expected. The principles of the art, indeed, could not possibly dispense with it; for, man, when absolutely destitute of Christian piety, is yet possessed of reason, and moral sentiment, and of a certain admiration of what is deemed noble and generous in character and actions. As life and manners are the business of the theatre, some care must be taken to make them pleasing to an audience which, though greatly corrupt, yet consists of moral agents: Let this be neglected, and the stage could not exist at all, and that precisely on the same principle,—that its perfect renovation would destroy its existence in a corrupt state of the people. The auditor is of a mixed nature, and, therefore, the entertainment must employ a corresponding mixture of elements, to touch the varied springs of pleasurable movement, interwoven with his moral system.

Let a couple you will find merely in the

Were an audience to consist entirely of murderers, and the most abandoned of wretches, they would still be capable of a certain pleasure through the medium of their moral feeling. Thus thieves applaud justice among themselves, and take a pleasure in detesting and punishing its opposite. of savage men tear each other in the street, the moral audience around them rejoicing, not fray itself, but also in the equity with which the combatants discharge their duty. "Fair play!" resounds from all quarters. The unfair antagonist is denounced, and the generous enemy is loftily extolled with sentiments of equal generosity by the gratified beholders. It is true, justice, as such, ought always to be praised; but is it really improving, in a moral view, to see it despicably employed in regulating a revengeful quarrel, whether of uncultivated boors in actual fight, or of polished and princely villains imitated on the stage? But if there be no improvement, there is abundance of pleasure. He, therefore, who writes a play must not neglect to distribute his precious morsels of morality, according to a profound rule, drawn from

a theory of the sensitive excitement connected with the drama. The greatest villain in the theatre would not endure a piece exhibiting unmingled wickedness. It would shock his reason as improbable; it would shock his conscience as intolerable. We have seen the most cruel, impenitent of murderers acknowledge with gratified feelings the trivial acts of kindness shown to him by strangers. He could, doubtless, have been pleased to witness a dramatic imitation of similar kindness. Some writers for the stage, it would seem, have been too anxious on the score of excitement by means of moral sentiments, and have introduced an excess of this kind of composition; insomuch that Mr. Sheridan found it necessary to satirize the fault, which immediately put an end to it. All this may possibly account, in some degree, for certain rules of the drama, in regard to its morality. Were these views of the subject entirely erroneous, we should expect to find their confutation in the majority of plays, and most certainly in Shakspeare, the most distinguished and voluminous of all dramatic writers. Of this great author Dr. Johnson gives the following severe, but, as I conceive, indisputable, judgment respecting the moral form and bearing of his pieces.

"He sacrifices," says this critic, "virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings, indeed, a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to show in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place."*

on some

Our author's conception of a reformed stage may be partly gathered from his remarks, in the "Dissertation," on popular dramatic pieces. The applause he gives to Mr. Maturin must be founded on "Bertram." And "John Bull" is praised as one of the best and most perfect productions of its kind.

See Preface to Shakspeare.

Did the limits of this Inquiry permit, it would be easy to show how far these two dramas are from comporting with Christian principles, and with that Christian temper and spirit which ought even to pervade our recreations. We confidently refer the serious observer to make the analysis and comparison for himself. As to the first, what pious mind can fail to be distressed at the gross and infamous suppositions connected with the madness of the heroine, and the villainy of the hero; at the viciousness of its characters, and its outrage on dramatic justice? So much for an imagined reformation of the stage.

It has frequently been urged, with a strange kind of triumph : "Point out a single text of Scripture which expressly prohibits the amusement of the stage?' In our turn we ask, Show us the text that expressly prohibits the negro slavery of the West Indies? Had all the actual shapes and forms in which it is possible for the elemental principles of wickedness to unfold themselves, been distinctly noticed by the inspired writers, the effect would have been weakened; the Bible would have been a work of more immense size than the statute-book of England. But if the spirit and design of the Scriptures, and the inferences which may be rationally deduced from them as premises, are in direct opposition to the existing theatre, it will then be an amusement decidedly unlawful. This is freely conceded by the advocates of the stage. Now, I leave the reader to determine, whether, from experience, observation, and the arguments here offered to the public, it does not appear, that the general strain and temper of theatrical amusements is completely hostile to the holiness, the devotion, the continually subduing sense of the presence and majesty of God, the awful apprehension of eternity, and the extremely sensitive character of the moral conscience; which, Christianity, not only from its precepts, but from the dreadful and momentous grandeur of its arrangements, loudly demands?

This solemn state of the mind will never interfere with the joyous character of legitimate recreation, but will perfectly coincide with it; as the great law of gravitation, while it rests the universe upon its basis, never interrupts the more sprightly exhibitions of light and beauty, as witnessed in the dancing clouds, and in all the varied decorations of a summer scene; but receives them into its own harmonies, and gives them poise and temperance. Let such fundamental laws, however,

be counteracted by some electrical accumulation or vacuum; or by removing the foundations of some massive pile, and they will rise in fearful power to assert their own unalienable sovereignty. Thus let the man who has been in elevated communion with his God, and with the worlds of eternity, come forth from the sanctuary of his retirement. Is he now unfitted for the business of this life? Is he unsuited in his spirit for the banquet, where well-selected guests, of kindred disposition with his own, enjoy

"The feast of reason, and the flow of soul?"

or for any of the numerous enjoyments which God himself has evidently furnished to soothe our passage to the grave? We repel the charge of ascetic sullenness and gloom, and exclaim, "He is not." Let him deliberately pass from the throne of heaven to the theatre, and attend upon the shocking violations of Christian doctrine and piety exhibited; for instance, in "Bertram," or "Pizarro," or the "Stranger," (plays of high popularity, and, consequently, proper specimens of the whole,) and will these two systems of general feeling show no signs of mutual revulsion? of vehement disruption of the one from the other?

Again Will any one deny, that those great and numerous evils of the theatre, which are specifically acknowledged in the foregoing quotations from its friends, are condemned by the most express letter of the Scriptures? What is there no text against familiarizing whole audiences with vice; expressing rank obscenity, or, in its absence, the more delicate, but more destructive, double-meaning, before a promiscuous public? &c. &c. The recollection of the reader will furnish him with the remainder of these sad concessions.

VI. OF THE ARGUMENT DRAWN FROM AUTHORITY.

AMONG great numbers who have recorded to posterity their decided opposition to the stage, as, in its general character, an evil of great magnitude, are the following:

Of Pagans,-Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Solon, Isocrates, Plutarch, Cicero, Livy, Valerius Maximus, Séneca, Propertius, Ovid, and Tacitus.

Of states and sovereigns,-Themistocles, the Lacedemonians, the Massilians, the Romans, Augustus, Nero, M. A. Antoninus,

I

Constantine the Great, Julian the Apostate, Theodosius the Great, Valentinian, Gratian, and Valens.

Scipio Nasica, termed "the high priest of Roman virtue," prevailed with the senate to forbid the building of a theatre at Rome, as a corruption from the Greeks, injurious to the ancient morality, and more destructive to the state than Carthage.*

Of Christian councils,-those of Laodicea, Carthage, Eliberis, Arles, Nice, Hippo, Paris, and the Lateran council; as also the synodus Turonensis, the synodus Lingoniensis, and the synod at Rochelle.

Of the Fathers, -Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, St. Cyprian, St. Augustine, St. Cyril, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Isidore, &c.

Of modern Divines, and others,-Archbishops Bradwardine, Parker, Usher, Tillotson, and Secker; Bishops Alley, Babington, Kennet, Andrews, Barclay, Stillingfleet, and Hall; Doctors Reynolds, Griffith, Williams, Elton, Sparks, White, Bond, and Blair; Judge Bulstrode, and Lord Chief Justice Hale; the Rev. Messrs. Venn, Cunningham, Milner, and Gisborne; Mr. Wilberforce, &c. &c. &c.

Such is the phalanx of authorities drawn out against the stage. Now, I challenge the whole theatrical world to produce an equal number of authorities, possessed of equal fame in their respective professions, equally capable of deciding on moral questions; and who have left, on known record, testimonies equally clear and strong, all in favour of that which is the grand point at issue,-the moral tendency of the stage. I will venture to affirm, that no such army, displayed in this precise manner, (and the argument demands this precision,) can possibly be produced.

But I shall be told, that some of these persons have actually written in approbation of the stage. If their writings on this subject contradict themselves, that is not our fault; and the champion of the theatre is at liberty, in drawing up his list of heroes, to take full advantage of this circumstance. The testimonies opposed to the stage are ready to be produced; and pretty strong ones they are, I can assure him, if he knows it not already. He must give me leave, however, to take the

• De Civit. Dei, lib. i. cap. 30.