d soul to the society. We scorned the
artificial light that illumined our midnight orgies, and seldom
separated before the beams of the sun were dancing in our festive
cups.'

The following account of the first _Theatrical Fund Dinner_, an
entertainment of which we hear so much latterly in England, with the
defence of actors against the charges of extravagance and improvidence so
often brought against them, will possess interest for American readers:

'THE Covent-Garden Theatrical Fund about this period was
languishing for want of support; and the great importance to be
derived from an increase of its means seriously occupied the
attention of the committee. We naturally looked upon it as
affording an opportunity of increasing the respectability of the
profession, and the means of preventing those individual appeals
to the public from our impoverished brethren. There is a popular
delusion that actors form a class in which the most reckless
profusion is displayed; that the habits of their lives are
necessarily dissipated, and that in the enjoyments of the luxuries
of to-day, the wants and cares of to-morrow are entirely lost
sight of. I do not believe in these sweeping assertions. I will
not pretend to say that actors are exempt from the frailties of
humanity; nay, I will admit that their course of life perhaps
exposes them to greater temptations; but this fact ought rather to
operate in their favor, than to tell so powerfully against them. I
would ask those persons who are so inimical to the profession of
an actor, whether longevity is the result of dissipation; and if
they will take the trouble of examining, they will find that
actors in general are extremely long-lived. There is a want of
thriftiness in their composition, I grant; and fortunately for
them the same charge is brought against the poet; the man whose
high intellectual powers prevent his descending to the level of
this work-day world. But will any one take the trouble of
explaining from whence the actor is to derive his wealth? We will
imagine that his salary is respectable, that it is regularly paid,
and that there is no excuse for his being in debt. And now take
into consideration that he has an appearance to maintain; that he
has a family to support; and then what becomes of the opportunity
of laying by a modicum even, to