ibel. Hence the stage is looked up to
as a great school, and the eminent actors are universally looked to as
the best instructors in action, elocution, orthoepy, and the component
parts of oratory. By following the same liberal and wise system with
respect to OUR stage, we may reasonably hope soon to bring it to a
reputable state of competition with that of Great Britain, and in that
as in most other parts of the elegancies of life, not very long hence,
to place the new on a complete footing with the old country.

[Footnote 4: By Lord Mansfield in the King's Bench, in the case of
Macklin against Sparks, Miles, Reddish, and others.]

[Footnote 5: The audience, whenever an individual hisses against the
sense of the house, always silence the offender by crying, "there's
a goose in the pit (or wherever it is) turn him out," and if he
persists they expel him by force. It is to be hoped our audiences
would follow the example. It is frequently necessary.]

BIOGRAPHY--FOR THE MIRROR.

The passion for inquiring into the lives of conspicuous men is so
universally felt, that we cannot help indulging it in cases where not
only the person is unknown, but where his actions are so remote, that we
can neither form a picture of the one, nor any possible way be affected
by the other. The delight with which children themselves read the
histories of remarkable characters, and the avidity with which, at every
period of life, we read biography, are proofs that this passion has it
source in nature, abstracted from any connexion imagined to exist
between the object and our own heart. It is, however, more lively when
the object lives in our time, and when his actions are the subject of
daily conversation in our hearing, or when we have ourselves been
witnesses of them; and still more so, when the person being still in
existence has found means by the force of his talents to agitate a whole
people, to rouse general curiosity and admiration, and to form, as it
were, a landmark in any interesting department of civilized life.

That mankind, in general, derive greater pleasure from biography than
from most other kinds of writing is universally acknowledged. One of the
greatest moral philosophers of Britain justly observes, that of all the
various kinds of narrative writing, that which is read with the greatest
eagerness, and may with the greatest facility and effect be applied to
the purposes of life is biography; and the