re described when they go to the theatres; but it must be
acknowledged that as yet a very small number of them go to theatres at
all. Although playgoers and plays have prodigiously increased in the
United States in the last forty years, the population indulges in this
kind of amusement with the greatest reserve. This is attributable to
peculiar causes, which the reader is already acquainted with, and of
which a few words will suffice to remind him. The Puritans who founded
the American republics were not only enemies to amusements, but they
professed an especial abhorrence for the stage. They considered it as
an abominable pastime; and as long as their principles prevailed with
undivided sway, scenic performances were wholly unknown amongst them.
These opinions of the first fathers of the colony have left very deep
marks on the minds of their descendants. The extreme regularity of
habits and the great strictness of manners which are observable in the
United States, have as yet opposed additional obstacles to the growth
of dramatic art. There are no dramatic subjects in a country which has
witnessed no great political catastrophes, and in which love invariably
leads by a straight and easy road to matrimony. People who spend every
day in the week in making money, and the Sunday in going to church, have
nothing to invite the muse of Comedy.

A single fact suffices to show that the stage is not very popular in the
United States. The Americans, whose laws allow of the utmost freedom
and even license of language in all other respects, have nevertheless
subjected their dramatic authors to a sort of censorship. Theatrical
performances can only take place by permission of the municipal
authorities. This may serve to show how much communities are like
individuals; they surrender themselves unscrupulously to their ruling
passions, and afterwards take the greatest care not to yield too much to
the vehemence of tastes which they do not possess.

No portion of literature is connected by closer or more numerous ties
with the present condition of society than the drama. The drama of one
period can never be suited to the following age, if in the interval an
important revolution has changed the manners and the laws of the nation.
The great authors of a preceding age may be read; but pieces written
for a different public will not be followed. The dramatic authors of the
past live only in books. The traditional taste of certain individuals