, says: "their error is not heterodoxy, but excessive, overheated
zeal." Thus we find that the stage has ever been with many well-meaning
though mistaken men, a constant object of censure. Of those, a vast
number express themselves with the sober, calm tenderness which comports
with the character of christians, while others again have so far lost
their temper as to discard in a great measure from their hearts the
first of all christian attributes--charity. We hope, for the honour of
christianity, that there are but few of the latter description. There
are men however of a very different mould--men respectable for piety and
for learning, who have suffered themselves to be betrayed into opinions
hostile to the drama upon other grounds: these will even read plays, and
profess to admire the poetry, the language, and the genius of the
dramatic poet; but still make war upon scenic representations,
considering them as stimulants to vice--as a kind of moral cantharides
which serves to inflame the passions and break down the ramparts behind
which religion and prudence entrench the human heart. Some there are
again, who entertain scruples of a different kind, and turn from a play
because it is a fiction; while there are others, and they are most
worthy of argument, who think that theatres add more than their share to
the aggregate mass of luxury, voluptuousness, and dissipation, which
brings nations to vitious refinement, enervation and decay.

In all reasoning of this kind, authority goes a great way, and therefore
before we proceed any further, we will enrol under the banners of our
argument a few high personages, whose names on such an occasion are of
weight to stand against the world, and enumerate some great nations who
reverenced and systematically encouraged the drama. If it can be shown
that some of the most exalted men that ever lived--men eminent for
virtue, high in power and distinction, and illustrious for talents, in
different countries and at different times, have countenanced the stage
and even written for it; nay, that some of that description have
themselves been actors, further argument may well be thought
superfluous: yet we will not rest the matter there, but taking those
along with us as authorities, go on and probe the error to which we
allude, even to the very bone.

It might not be difficult to prove by inference from a multitude of
facts scattered through the history of the world, that a passion for the