es on for the sake
of his word--how great humanity appears, how small the stern power of
fate!

Vice is portrayed on the stage in an equally telling manner. Thus, when
old Lear, blind, helpless, childless, is seen knocking in vain at his
daughters' doors, and in tempest and night he recounts by telling his
woes to the elements, and ends by saying: "I have given you all,"--how
strongly impressed we feel at the value of filial piety, and how hateful
ingratitude seems to us!

The stage does even more than this. It cultivates the ground where
religion and law do not think it dignified to stop. Folly often troubles
the world as much as crime; and it has been justly said that the heaviest
loads often hang suspended by the slightest threads. Tracing actions to
their sources, the list of criminals diminish, and we laugh at the long
catalogue of fools. In our sex all forms of evil emanate almost entirely
from one source, and all our excesses are only varied and higher forms of
one quality, and that a quality which in the end we smile at and love;
and why should not nature have followed this course in the opposite sex
too? In man there is only one secret to guard against depravity; that
is, to protect his heart against wickedness.

Much of all this is shown up on the stage. It is a mirror to reflect
fools and their thousand forms of folly, which are there turned to
ridicule. It curbs vice by terror, and folly still more effectually by
satire and jest. If a comparison be made between tragedy and comedy,
guided by experience, we should probably give the palm to the latter as
to effects produced. Hatred does not wound the conscience so much as
mockery does the pride of man. We are exposed specially to the sting of
satire by the very cowardice that shuns terrors. From sins we are
guarded by law and conscience, but the ludicrous is specially punished on
the stage. Where we allow a friend to correct our morals, we rarely
forgive a laugh. We may bear heavy judgment on our transgressions, but
our weaknesses and vulgarities must not be criticised by a witness.

The stage alone can do this with impunity, chastising us as the anonymous
fool. We can bear this rebuke without a blush, and even gratefully.

But the stage does even more than this. It is a great school of
practical wisdom, a guide for civil life, and a key to the mind in all
its sinuosities. It does not, of course, remove egoism and stubbornness
in evil ways; for a thousand