the senses is secured; the dramatis personæ are living characters; appropriate and impressive scenery is supplied; the powerful effect of the living voice is added; the representation of the actor, who is supposed best to understand the play, affords a comment on the poet. The spectator has correct conceptions sanctioned, new ones supplied, and erroneous ones corrected. In its application to a certain class of persons, the truth of this statement is altogether unquestionable. It is easily conceived, that minds of an unintellectual character, of a phlegmatic habit, and which are unaccustomed to efforts of thought, would derive considerable assistance from a stage representation, in their attempts to embrace the mental pleasures of a drama. With relation to minds of an opposite character, the benefit is less obvious. The acknowledgment has not unfrequently been made by persons of thought and imagination, that the purest intellectual pleasure is found in reading a play, and not in wit nessing its performance. The fact admits satisfactory explanation. In reading the play, the characters and scenery presented are ideal, and consequently perfect; in the representation, both are sensible imitations, and are therefore defective. The reader of a play is allowed the free exercise of the creative faculty, and he can give the persons and scenes introduced a form best adapted to his taste and feelings; the spectator, on the other hand, is entirely dependant on the actors. The former enjoys the perfection of nature, the latter suffers from the imperfections of art. In reading a drama, the spirit of the text is sometimes mistaken or lost, but this evil oftener happens in the representation. The best actors frequently fail, and the inferior performers are perpetually subjecting the spectator to this cause of vexation. Conceive an individual introduced, for the first time, as the spectator of one of our most celebrated dramas. Suppose him to be familiar with the play, that it is his favourite one; that his imagination, at once powerful and correct, has furnished the scenes with its best creations; that he has studied the beauties of the production, and that both his imagination and heart have drunk deeply into its spirit. He gains admission to the theatre, and takes his seat among the spectators. spectators. The magnificence and splendour of the building, the display of beauty and fashion, the gaiety and bustle of the scene, give their corresponding emotions to his mind. At length the tumult ceases, and the whole spectacle is one of silence, order, beauty, and grandeur. The first scene of the play opens to his anxious gaze; his first impressions are all that he could wish, and he yields to the illusion, which is almost complete. As the piece advances, however, he suffers disappointment. The imperfect, though well-attempted representations of the scenery of the drama; the defective acting of the subordinate performers; the frequent indistinctness of the speakers, so often interrupted by the clamours of senseless admirers and venal critics; the violence, which, in a thousand ways, is done to the exquisite and perfect conceptions of his imagination, every moment force themselves upon his mind, in opposition to his favourable prepossessions, and his honest conviction at last will probably be, that whatever may be the sensible gratification derived from the representation of a drama, the higher order of intellectual pleasure is to be found in its private perusal. The purely mental pleasure supplied by the representation of a drama, after all these reductions, is still considerable. In witnessing the imitative powers of a good actor, an intellectual mind must receive gratification of no inferior description. The genius displayed is certainly of a high order, and, as a triumph of human skill, his exhibitions cannot be contemplated without admiration and delight. Good acting, like a good painting, must be studied by the lovers of art with a high degree of interest. The inferiority of the imita tion to the original is, in both cases, ad mitted; but the success of the copy affords gratification. Beside, an actor is an instructer: he assists to read the productions of the dramatist, discovers new beauties, and increases the interest afforded. Add to this, the exercise of the critical knowledge of the histrionic art, canvassing the merits of different actors, the interest felt in the success of a favourite performer, the pleasurable excitement of mind which is hereby supplied, and the stage will be already invested with innocent attractions sufficiently powerful to obtain, from many, approbation and support. The moral benefits of the stage next demand discussion. The theatre has often been styled "the School of Morals." To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, |