fruits of their professional industry, and a due profit to the house they belong to. The hours of re

presentation, in one or more of these theatres, might be rendered more convenient to those in high life, while the middling classes might enjoy a rational and classical entertainment after the business of the day.

Such an arrangement might, indeed, be objected to, by those who entertain a holy horror of the very name of a theatre; and who imagine impiety and blasphemy are inseparable from the Drama. We have no room left to argue with such persons; or we might endeavour to prove, that the dramatie art is in itself as capable of being directed either to right or wrong purposes, as the art of printing. It is true, that even after a play has been formed upon the most virtuous model, the man who is engaged in the duties of religion will be better employed than he who is seated in a theatre, and listening to the performance. To those abstracted and enrapt spirits, who feel, or suppose they feel, themselves capable of remaining constantly involved in heavenly thoughts, any sublunary amusement may justly seem frivolous. But the mass of mankind are not so framed. The Supreme Being, who claimed the seventh day as his own, allotted the other six days of the week for purposes merely human. When the necessity of daily labour is removed, and the call of social duty fulfilled, that of moderate and timely amusement claims its place, as a want inherent in our nature. To relieve this want, and fill up the mental vacancy, games are devised, books are written, music is composed, spectacles and plays are invented

and exhibited. And if these last have a moral and virtuous tendency; if the sentiments expressed are calculated to rouse our love of what is noble, and our contempt of what is base or mean; if they unite hundreds in a sympathetic admiration of virtue, abhorrence of vice, or derision of folly; it will remain to be shown how far the spectator is more criminally engaged, than if he had passed the evening in the idle gossip of society; in the feverish pursuits of ambition; or in the unsated and insatiable struggle after gain-the graver employments of the present life, but equally unconnected with our existence hereafter.

END OF VOLUME SIXTH.

EDINBURGH PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY, PAUL'S WORK.