“D. JOHN.--(to the servant)--Rise and do your duty. “SERV.--Oh the devil, the devil! (Marble ghost enters.) “D. JOHN.--Ha! ’tis the ghost! Let’s rise and receive him! Come, Governour, you are welcome, sit there; if we had thought you would have come, we would have staid for you. * * * * * * Here, Governour, your health! Friends, put it about! Here’s excellent meat, taste of this ragout. Come, I’ll help you, come eat, and let old quarrels be forgotten. (The ghost threatens him with vengeance.) “D. JOHN.--We are too much confirmed--curse on this dry discourse. Come, here’s to your mistress, you had one when you were living: not forgetting your sweet sister. (devils enter.) “D. JOHN.--Are these some of your retinue? Devils, say you? I’m sorry I have no burnt brandy to treat ’em with, that’s drink fit for devils,” etc. Nor is the scene from which we quote interesting, in dramatic probability alone; it is susceptible likewise of a sound moral; of a moral that has more than common claims on the notice of a too numerous class, who are ready to receive the qualities of gentlemanly courage, and scrupulous honour, (in all the recognised laws of honour,) as the substitutes of virtue, instead of its ornaments. This, indeed, is the moral value of the play at large, and that which places it at a world’s distance from the spirit of modern jacobinism. The latter introduces to us clumsy copies of these showy instrumental qualities, in order to reconcile us to vice and want of principle; while the Atheista Fulminato presents an exquisite portraiture of the same qualities, in all their gloss and glow, but presents them for the sole purpose of displaying their hollowness, and in order to put us on our guard by demonstrating their utter indifference to vice and virtue, whenever these and the like accomplishments are contemplated for themselves alone. Eighteen years ago I observed, that the whole secret of the modern jacobinical drama, (which, and not the German, is its appropriate designation,) and of all its popularity, consists in the confusion and subversion of the natural order of things in their causes and effects: namely, in the excitement of surprise by representing the qualities of liberality, refined feeling, and a nice sense of honour (those things rather which pass amongst us for such) in persons and in classes where experience teaches us least to expect them; and by rewarding with all the sympathies which are the due of virtue, those criminals whom law, reason, and religion have excommunicated from our esteem.