dramatic art is inherent in the nature of man. How else should it happen
that in every age and nation of the world, vestiges remain of something
resembling theatrical amusements. It is asserted that the people of
China full three thousand years ago had something of the kind and
presented on a public stage, in spectacle, dialogue and action, living
pictures of men and manners, for the suppression of vice, and the
circulation of virtue and morality. Even the Gymnosophists, severe as
they were, encouraged dramatic representation. The Bramins, whose
austerity in religious and moral concerns almost surpasses belief, were
in the constant habit of enforcing religious truths by dramatic fictions
represented in public. The great and good PILPAY the fabulist, is said
to have used that kind of exhibition as a medium for conveying political
instruction to a despotic prince, his master, to whom he dared not to
utter the dictates of truth, in any other garb. In the obscurity of
those remote ages, the evidences of particular facts are too faintly
discernible to be relied upon: All that can be assumed as certain,
therefore, is that the elementary parts of the dramatic art had then
been conceived and rudely practised. But the first _regular_ play was
produced in Greece, where the great Eschylus, whose works are handed
down to us, flourished not only as a dramatist, but as an illustrious
statesman and warrior.

Without dwelling on the many other examples afforded by Greece, we
proceed to as high authority as can be found among men: we mean Roscius
the Roman actor. That extraordinary man's name is immortalized by
Cicero, who has in various parts of his works panegyrized him no less
for his virtues than for his talents. Of him, that great orator,
philosopher and moralist has recorded, that he was a being so perfect
that any person who excelled in any art was usually called A
ROSCIUS--that he knew better than any other man how to inculcate virtue,
and that he was more pure in his private life than any man in Rome.

In the Roman catholic countries the priesthood shut out as far as they
could from the people the instruction of the stage. For ages the fire of
the HOLY inquisition kept works of genius of every kind in suppression
all over the south of Europe. In France the monarch supported the stage
against its enemies; but though he was able to support the actors in
life, he had not power or influence sufficient to obtain for them
consolatio