moral or not, if people will pick and steal, it is nothing but fair and right to give them the opportunity.

The gentleman would have spoken more to the point, Sir, if he had examined the taste itself. Though perhaps the course he took was, after all, the wiser one; seeing that the examination I propose would only have brought him a more complete defeat.

Why is this passion for dramatic representations implanted in so many breasts? Sir, the minds that harbour the passion are minds which either dislike or cannot encounter real life; and therefore seek a false existence in fictitious performances. Such minds are countless, and therefore it is no wonder that there should be in all ages, countless favourers of the Drama.

It is because the Stage is essentially unreal, Sir, that I deem it detrimental to morality; and for that reason it has always received my most strenuous and decided opposition.

FOURTH SPEAKER.I think that the ex planation which has just been given of the causes of men's pleasure in theatrical amusements is not by any means a wise or true one. The first and chief reason for the taste seems unquestionably to be the absolute need of amusement. The mind must now and then unbend and luxuriate: and

the gay doings of the theatre form altogether perhaps the best means of relaxation. But besides this, there is a great mental pleasure provided by the very nature of the Drama itself. It represents life and nature in heroics, and so raises, refreshes, and restores the weary and depressed spirit of the world-fatigued and careworn spectator.

It is this that to my mind makes the Stage a moralizer. In his contact with the world, man forms a low and grovelling idea of life and of his fellow men: the meanness, selfishness, bitterness, and hypocrisy, which he sees around him, all serve to contract and lower his estimate of humanity. But the Stage shows him the world in its finest and brightest colours; brings before him the great, good, and glorious of his species; and so raises and elevates the conceptions which he had previously formed. The Drama gives us the romantic side of life, and thus makes the literal more endurable. In the theatre we quit the sordid world of fraud, semblance, and ambition, and enter into the beautiful realm of the Ideal. Our eyes and hearts are there feasted with purity, loftiness and heroism, and we are beckoned by the models of goodness there displayed, to tread with them the paths of virtue or of greatness, and to win a like renown. Depend upon it that the Drama's exhibition of bravery, strength, resolu

tion and affection, has done no little to foster and nourish those sentiments in the hearts of the spectators who have witnessed them.

the last speaker has urged in favour of the Drama, is to me the strongest possible proof of its evil tendency.

The speaker described the Stage as the representation of life in heroics: I agree with him that it is so. But, Sir, we want realities not ideals: we want to see the world as it is, not the world as fancy portrays it. The admission that the Drama presents to our view idealities instead of truths, is a knock-down blow to the Stage at once; for the greatest dramatist the world has ever seen has told us that the object of the Stage is "To show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, the very body of the time its form and pressure." As then it is admitted that the Drama is now prostituted to improper uses, I am at a loss to conceive how it can be further defended.

And these said "heroics," what are they? What sort of heroes and patterns have we on the Stage? They are conquerors, glory-seekers, accomplished villains, stoics, chivalric bloodstained knights, and so forth. The sentiments they utter are "ambition," " renown," "honour,"

"war," brute "courage," and other virtues of similar nature.

One of the great heroes of the Stage is Cato. He is described as

"A brave man struggling with the storms of fate,

And greatly falling with a falling state."

Stoical indifference is called "brave struggling," and cowardly suicide is called "greatly falling!" A pretty example of heroism this, to a world prone and ready to imitate!

Lucius Junius Brutus is another of the Drama's heroes. The example he sets us is to order the execution of his sons, for a simple act of disobedience! Very refreshing and elevating this must be to a tired and sated mind! Very much it must raise the spectators' conception of human nature!

And this is a fair sample of what the Drama almost always represents to us. Vile passions are invested with the garb of virtue, folly wears the aspect of wisdom, and crime is clothed with the attributes of greatness. To say that the Drama might be pure is beside the question: what the Drama is, must be the subject we debate: and judging of the Drama by what we see and know of it, I think we cannot hesitate to say that its tendency is clearly towards evil.

SIXTH SPEAKER.Sir, It would be folly to

deny that a great deal of evil exists in the Drama and in the Theatre: but I think it equal folly to affirm that the evil of dramatic entertainments outweighs the good. Our friend who spoke last has referred us to some of the bad examples which the Stage presents to us; but he quite omitted to instance any of the good ones. Nay, he led us to believe that there were no good ones: a great error, as I shall attempt to show.

I instance then, Macbeth. We are made to see, first, the generous, brave, and successful warrior, "returning home in triumph " to the honours he has won. We next see the spectre of ambition cross his path We see him parleying with temptation till at last it conquers him, and forces him to resolve and commit a foul and atrocious murder. We then see him invested with the object of his desire, the purple of royalty. And then the lesson begins. We see retribution come. We see the sinner stung by the serpent of remorse hurried on by fear from crime to crime: deserted by his guilty hopes and weird helpers: and at last dying the death of a hunted brute. Is there no morality in this? No lesson? No example to the world?

I point you next to William Tell. Here the poet makes us see the hideousness of moral slavery shows us that to fight for freedom is at once the duty and the happiness of man: and