with more than the zeal of the Church of Rome. But a follower of Wesley
or Whitfield would not enter the den of abomination. Here, however, we
take care all our comedies shall be purified, and our tragedies free,
even from an oath; both are subject to the censor's unsparing pen, and
must be subsequently licensed by the Lord Chamberlain.

The actors in England, have, it is true, only become respectable
within the last half century, and though they are termed his majesty's
servants, yet an _unrepealed_ statute denounces them as vagabonds.
As a body, numerous in itself, they are as free from crime as any other
associated body or profession of men, and yet do they "his majesty's
servants" continue to lay under the stigma which the above unrepealed
act fixes upon them. This is perfectly anomalous, and it was spiritedly
denounced by Sir Walter Scott, when on a recent and interesting occasion
he nobly and manfully declared "Its professors had been stigmatized; and
laws had been passed against them less dishonourable to them than to the
statesman by whom they were proposed, and to the legislators by whom
they were passed." To repeal, therefore, an act nugatory in itself,
would not add to the reputation of the profession, nor give a license to
further abuse; but it would be an act of justice, and remove a prejudice
unjustly attached to the professors of a difficult art.

The critical pen of Mrs. Inchbald justly remarks, "To the honour of
a profession long held in contempt by the wise--and still contemned
by the weak--Shakspeare, the pride of Britain, was a player." To the
illustrious bard, the modern drama is indebted for its excellence. His
writings will remain for ever the grandest monument of a genius which
opened to him the whole heart of man, all the mines of fancy, all the
stores of nature, and gave him power beyond all other writers, to move,
astonish, and delight mankind. In the drama, the most interesting