"If examples have some force and life when trusted to paper, how much greater must their vigour be, when they live in the player, and are moved and speak in the most lofty sentiments, and all the eloquence of action. The spectator imagines that a series of ages having revolved back, and the distance of places being contracted, he is suddenly conveyed into those places and ages, in which the subject of the drama happened; or else, that past times being renewed, the subject is again acted in his presence. You do not on these occasions read silently in your closet the illustrious acts of antient heroes, who have immortalized themselves by the love they displayed for their country, their parents, their children, &c. These wonderful men are called from their tombs where they have so long slumbered, appear again in the world, and you behold their generous, their pious strife. "In Athens the Stage was impowered by the Legislature to instruct the ignorant vulgar, and, as a censor, to reform the rude populace; it was its duty to make Tragedy a school of wisdom, and Comedy of reproof. The poets rendered the Theatre beneficial to the world, by appointing Tragedy to calm the passions by terror and pity, and Comedy to reform the mind by ridicule and censure. The duty of the Poet was, as Horace expresses it--_aut prodesse aut delectare_. "I am sorry to say that some of our comic writers have been too fond of familiarizing their audiences to vice; and we need make no doubt that the immorality of the stage has contributed to the depravity of manners too visible amongst all ranks of people, and fulfils what Juvenal says, ----_nullâ virtute redemptum A vitiis_.----