Modern manners, late dinners, ball-dresses, and the Houses of Parliament, are doubtless serious obstacles to the higher classes of the nobility and gentry frequently attending the theatre; but the example of the Opera-house, which is crowded night after night with the elite of that very class, is sufficient to demonstrate, that all these difficulties can be got over, when people of fashion make up their minds to go to a place of amusement, even where not one in ten understand the language in which the piece is composed. The strictness of principle--mistaken, as we deem it, and hurtful in its effects--which keeps away a large and important portion of the middle and most respectable portion of the community, at all times, and in all places, from the theatre, is without doubt a very serious impediment to dramatic success, and in nothing so much so, as in throwing the patronage and direction of its performance into the hands of a less scrupulous part of society. But these strict principles, ever since the Great Rebellion, have pervaded a considerable portion of British society; and yet how nobly was the stage supported during the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century, in the days of Garrick, Siddons, and Kemble! The great number of theatres which are nightly open in the metropolis, and rapidly increasing in all the principal cities of the kingdom, demonstrates, that the play-going portion of the community is sufficiently numerous to support the stage, generally in respectability, at times in splendour. Without doubt, the licentiousness of the saloons of the great theatres in London is a most serious evil, and it well deserves the consideration of Government, whether some means should not be taken for its correction; but is the Opera-house so very pure in its purlieus? and are the habitual admirers of the ballet likely to be corrupted by occasionally seeing Othello and Juliet? The prevailing, and in fact universal, passion for reading novels at home, unquestionably affords an inexhaustible fund of domestic amusement; but does experience prove that the imagination once kindled, the heart once touched, are willing to stop short in the quest of excitement--to be satisfied with imperfect gratification? Novel-reading is as common on the Continent as in this country; but still the legitimate drama exhibits no such appearances of decrepitude in its Capitals. The masterpieces of Corneille and Racine are still constantly performed to crowded houses at Paris; the theatres of Italy resound with the melody of Metastasio, the dignity of Alfieri; and singing and the melodrama have nowhere banished Schiller's tragedies from the boards of Vienna and Berlin.