And who can tell what may be at some future time the result on the happiness of one hundred millions of subjects, of sentiments like these implanted in so pure a soil? The actor's province is not far distant from the preacher's. A happy time, if it should ever arrive, when this unity of purpose will be acknowledged by both, when the "reverend gentleman" will think it no part of his calling to rail upon the stage; and the actor will not find a strong inclination to retort by accusations of Mawworm and Tartuffe. But an objection is made in many quarters more to the theatre than to what is represented there. A play in a drawing-room is very different from a play at the Haymarket. One is all correct and proper; the other wicked and intolerable. This objection must therefore arise either from the different characters of the performers or of the audience. An officer of the Guards, who is great at theatricals, is an edifying sight in the part of Joseph Surface in the hall of a great country house in the Christmas week; and the same part is revolting and dangerous in the hands of poor Bob Finings on the regular stage. And yet the Honourable Captain Muff has been before the Consistory Court, has also made a brilliant appearance in Basinghall Street, has shot his kindest friend at Chalkfarm, and is an authority in the betting-ring second only to Mr Davis. Bob Finings is a steady, dull, respectable man, who has seen hard times, and struggled manfully against them; has brought up his children to honest callings, and totters through the part with the most helpless and reassuring imbecility. Is there danger there? But if the cases were reversed, and poor Bob Finings were the _roué_, and the honourable captain the respected _pater-familias_, why should that interfere with our appreciation of their dramatic skill? Surely most inoffensive would the wildest of Bob's transgressions be to the morals or feelings of the spectators in the boxes, pit, or gallery, who were never brought into contact with him in any other character than that of Joseph Surface, and neither sup with him after the play, nor waltz with him after the supper, as might possibly be the case with the gallant Lothario Muff. Then it must be the miscellaneousness of the company assembled in a theatre. Less select, certainly, than in the county gathering to the private play; but surely quite as safe. Is there a magnetic sympathy with vice that makes one or two sinners, locked up, we will suppose, in a private box, the electro-biologists of the whole assembly? Insolent faces will occasionally be turned to where we sit, hair-covered faces, and eyes that are uncomfortable to look upon; foreign-looking men dressed in the extremest fashion of Paris or Vienna, but whether British imitation or the real article is quite immaterial;--to this vulgar and audacious stare we shall certainly be exposed. But not more than in the street, or in the park, or in the Crystal Palace, or occasionally in a Belgravian