The opinion we have ventured to express on the inevitable decease of the acting drama--of tragic representations--as a general amusement of an age increasing in refinement, will probably subject us, in certain quarters, to an indignant reproof. Shakspeare, and the legitimate drama! seems, with some, to have all the sacredness of a national cause. Shakspeare, by all means--Shakspeare for ever! eternally!--only we would rather read him--if we could creep up there--with little Felicia Browne, in the apple-tree. Shakspeare supports the stage--so far as it remains supported--not the stage Shakspeare. And can he support it long? Consider what sort of amusement it is which tragic representation affords--for of comedy we say nothing--consider that it must either thrill us with emotions of a most violent order, (which the civilised man in general avoids), or it becomes one of the saddest platitudes in the world. Your savage can support prolonged ennui, and delights in excitement approaching to madness; your civilised man can tolerate neither one nor the other. Now your tragedy deals largely in both. It knows no medium. Every body has felt that, whether owing to the actor or the poet, the moment the interest of the piece is no longer at its height, it becomes intolerable. You are to be either moved beyond all self-control, which is not very desirable, or you are to sit in lamentable sufferance. In short, you are to be driven out of your senses, one way or the other. Depend upon it, it is a species of amusement which, however associated with great names--though Garrick acted, and Dr Johnson looked on--is destined, like the bull-fights of Spain, or the gladiatorial combats of old Rome, to fall before the advancing spirit of civilisation.