Newburyport, (Mass) TO VIOLET LIGHT of my life! - where'er thou art, So will the current of my days Be still to make me more thine own; A REFUTATION OF M. HUME'S ARGUMENT AGAINGT MIRACLES. BY THE REV. FREDERICK BEASLEY, D. D., PROVOST OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, ALL philosophers have remarked, that the difficulty in the proof of a miracle arises out of its contrariety to the laws of nature, as ascertained by our experience and observation. That a dead man should be restored to life, is so contrary to all the facts which we witness in the course of our affairs, that it requires testimony strongly corroborated, to render such an event credible. Thus far is acknowledged by all intelligent men, and the advocates of religion think they meet with this satisfactory proof in reference to the Gospel miracles. At this point M. Hume interposes, and undertakes to show, that no human testimony, however corroborated, can authenticate a miracle. Let us see how he compasses his conclusion. His argument is this: All our knowledge of facts depends upon experience, and this is true, even of that derived from human testimony. An invariable experience amounts to certainty-a variable experience, to different degrees of probability. Our experience of the uniform laws of nature is invariable; that of the truth of testimony is variable, since men may deceive and falsify. In the case of miracles, therefore, which are violations of the laws of nature, there is an invariable experience, amounting to certainty against them, while there is in their favor only that probability which is founded upon our variable experience of the truth of testimony. Here, then, will ever be certainty in knowledge poised against probability, and the argument complete against miracles. This argument is ingenious, and deserves a more satisfactory answer than I have ever seen. The learned divines, who have adverted to it, as appears to me, have not rightly apprehended it, and could of consequence have furnished no complete refutation. The whole force of this syllogism turns upon this single proposition: that our experience of the truth of human testimony always rests upon a variable experience, because the reports of witnesses are found to be false as well as true. This is an arrant sophism. Because men sometimes tell falsehood, does it follow that there is no testimony which amounts to certainty? M. Hume reasons as falsely as the sons would have done, at the death-bed of their father, in the fable, who was furnishing them an admonition to unity by his bundle of sticks, had they exclaimed, 'Father, behold these sticks may separately be easily broken, and therefore, when united, may also be broken.' The father would have refuted them, by an appeal to fact, and, as he did, have shown them, that when taken separately, they were very frangible, but when united, resisted his utmost strength. Like that of these sons, is M. Hume's reasoning, and it may as readily be refuted. Because the separate or ordinary testimony of men is fallible and deceptive, does it follow that there is no concurrence, or corroboration of testimony, which is irrefragable, and amounts to perfect certainty? When, since the creation of the world, was such a testimony as that of the Apostles and Evangelists found to be false? When this lesson is furnished by experience, it will be time enough to discredit the miracles of the Gospel, upon the ground that their authenticity rests upon a variable experience, or mere probability. As far as the experience of mankind has extended, in reference to a testimony thus corroborated, it may be said to be invariable in its favor. While kissing the blossoms of gold and blue, And deeply thy tiny plumes imbue With the colors from nature won ? But no,- for Flora when gayest drest, Like those which flash from thy jewelled breast, Lo! thy scented feast is forever spread; Where their beauty forgets to fade. Thou hast power from each blossoming thing A bright lapse 'neath a shadeless sky, And he turns away to sigh! AN ACTOR'S ALLOQUY. NUMBER FIVE. FREDERICK REYNOLDS, the dramatist, in the preface to his comedy Begone Dull Care,' complains most bitterly of the difficulties attendant on dramatic composition. Reynolds has no right to complain his pieces are pointless, vapid, and monotonous, and owe their celebrity solely to the talent employed in their personification. The same characters, plot, and incidents run through all his works; but Lewis, Munden, and Quick gave a current stamp to the crude mass, and made it pass as sterling ore. But if Reynolds, with such powerful auxiliaries, and such unbounded luck, found the profession of a playwright full of annoyances and disagreeables, how must they effect a young, enthusiastic mind, unfriended and unknown, and with a share of that ill-fortune which generally attends the sons of genius in the onset of their career? Why have we so few first-rate dramatic writers at the present day? Why should not the lights of learning burn their votive lamps before Thalia and Melpomene, in whose trains follow every sister muse? Is it not as proud a thing to rank as classmate with Shakspeare, Dryden, Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Knowles, as with Milton, Cowper, Southey, and Coleridge? The amphibii of the tribes, Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Byron, Scott, Moore, etc., are but so many instances in proof, that the drama would attract the attention of men of genius in a greater degree, but for the many distressing annoyances or difficulties,' as Reynolds calls them; and on these difficulties I shall take the liberty discursively to enlarge. Successful dramatists have generally been as well paid as any other class of authors. Goldsmith made as much money by one of his comedies, She Stoops to Conquer,' as he did by his three Histories of England. Reynolds received from two to three thousand dollars each for the generality of his trashy articles. Knowles, who is so assiduously endeavoring to smother the effect of his fine writing by the badness of his acting, was offered nearly five thousand dollars for any play he chose to put into the hands of the Drury Lane manager. If these instances are now but few and far between, it is because the taste of the public has been vitiated by the stream of French vaudeville, melodrame, and opera, which has been for some years running into and defiling the pure waters of our old delight, - even to undermining the banks and soiling the brightness of Avon's wholesome spring. The immense size of the patent theatres, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, compelled the tragedian to rant and shout, and forced the comedian to buffoonery and caricature. Pieces combining scenery, dancing, and spectacle, were displayed to great advantage on their mammoth stages, and the legitimate drama fell into decay. Driven from these large and dreary buildings, the best actors found a refuge in nearly a score of smaller edifices, termed Minor Theatres, where the audience can both see and hear; and the first artistes of the present day are to be found enlisted under the banners of the enterprising managers of the Adelphi, Surrey, Olympic, and Victoria theatres. Most of these minor houses are licensed by the magistrates for an entertainment of music and dancing only; and when first established, the performances were compelled to be deeply imbued with such delights. The 'burletta' appeared, an order of petite drama, somewhat resembling the French vaudeville, but written in common-place jingling rhyme. If singing and dancing were not sufficiently frequent in the construction of the piece, a piano was tingled in the orchestra, while the actors were speaking the miserable nonsense the law allowed them to utter. To represent such entertainments, Elliston rented the Surrey Theatre; and to gratify his vanity and fondness for acting, he had Mrs. Centlivre's comedy of The Beaux Stratagem' metamorphosed into a burletta, and degraded himself by playing the character of Archer, one of the finest of his assumptions, in such doggrel as this: 'A footman sure am I, Shakspeare did not escape, but suffered at the hands of the common hangman, one Mr. Lawler, who executed these enormities. Elliston's Macbeth drew money at the patent theatres, therefore he played it in verse at the Surrey. I recollect the opening of the dagger soliloquy : 'Is this a dagger that I see before me? My brains are dazzled by a whirlwind stormy: This is the sort of stuff monopoly endeavored to force upon the London public, scarcely twenty years ago. Some few years afterward, Booth played King Richard at the Coburg theatre, according to the text of the Drury Lane prompt-book; an information was laid against Mr. Glossop, the proprietor, and the magistrates awarded the penalty of fifty pounds for every offence. To do Elliston justice, he struggled manfully in the cause of common sense, and to his example we owe the total alteration which has since taken place. When lessee of the Olympic, he published an able pamphlet against the tyranny of the patentees, and vindicated the right of the minors to an extended nature of their performances. Two years afterward, he was lessee of Drury Lane, and prosecuted the other theatres for doing what he had himself declared the law allowed them to do, and which he had been the first to advocate and practice. The royal monopoly of the regular, or as the patentees term it, the legitimate drama, was originally centred in Drury Lane and Covent Garden theatres alone, except a license from the Lord Chamberlain to the owners of the little theatre in the Haymarket, for a few weeks in the summer. The case now is very different, though the law remains the same but the evident villany of the act of parliament has cut its own throat, and the law is actually a dead letter. The new theatre royal, Haymarket, has a license for eight months in the year; and although the inanity of the present proprietor has caused it for some time past to be most miserably conducted, it is the best house in London for the performance of good and sterling plays. To supply the constant demand occasioned by the new theatres, and gratify the rage for novelty, a new breed of authors has appeared. Burlettas, divested of the rhymes, operettas, where sense is sacrificed to sound, and other petites, beside the endless varieties of melo-drame, employ a formidable tribe of translators, adapters, arrangers, and com. pilers. The manner in which these pieces are produced, frequently hides the disgusting nakedness of the subject: in this, the managers follow the example of the magistrates of Douia, who, when the Emperor Charles entered their gates in great state, under triumphal arches and festoons of flowers, put a clean shirt upon the body of a malefactor that was hanging in chains at the city gate. The American dramatist suffers under still greater disadvantages than the English scribe. There never can be any encouragement given here to this department of literature, until the whole theatrical system is changed. Even the amateur playwright would scorn to throw away his time in concocting dramas, which there is no possibility of ever seeing played. The star' system directs the attention of the audience to the actor, not the drama. These corruscant creatures have their arrangement of pieces calculated for the display of their own peculiar powers, and carefully avoiding the remotest chance of eclipse by not allowing a stray light an opportunity even to twinkle. Then again, why should a manager pay for original pieces, when half a dollar will purchase the last new successful play from London, in four or five weeks from its first production? The Dramatic Author's Protection Act,' lately passed in London, forbids the performance of any play without some remuneration to the author: consequently every piece is printed there as soon as performed; but here in America, a dramatist has no such protection; for if an author were to print an original and popular drama, it would be played in every theatre in the States, in defiance of his prohibition: although, if an action at law was to be brought for infringement of the copy-right act, it is not quite certain but |