And so too of others, which, although not virtues have more of a prudential or worldly aspect. The stage may sometimes tolerate a temperance or an anti-gambling hero, but it is only to feed a temporary public excitement, and the moment that excitement manifests the first symptom of a relapse, this school of morals must immediately follow, instead of directing the new public sentiment. The wonder is, that any thinking man could ever expect it to be otherwise. Every one knows that the tastes of the audience make the law to the writer, the actor, and the manager. In this view of the matter, we need only the application of a very few plain principles and facts, to show how utterly hopeless must be the idea of the moral improvement of any representation which can only be sustained on the tenure of pleasing the largest audiences, without any regard to the materials of which they are composed. The first of these is, that the mass of mankind are not virtuous, they are not intelligent--the second, that even the more virtuous portions are worse in the midst of an applauding and condemning crowd than they would be in other circumstances; and the third, that the evil aspects of our humanity furnish the most exciting themes, or those best adapted to theatrical representations. But the world will become better--the world is becoming better, it may be said--and why should not the stage share in the improvement? If the world is becoming better, it is altogether through different and higher means. If it is becoming better, it is by the influence of truth and grace--through the Church--upon individual souls brought to a right view, first of all, of the individual depravity, and thus by individual accretion, contributing to the growth of a better public sentiment. The spirit of theatrical representations is directly the reverse of this. It operates upon men in crowds, not as assembled in the same space merely, but through those feelings and influences which belong to them solely or chiefly in masses. Deriving its aliment from the most outward public sentiment, its tendency is ever, instead of "holding the mirror up to Nature," in any self-revealing light, to hide men from themselves. By absorbing the soul in exciting representations, in which the most depraved can take a sort of abstract or sentimental interest, it causes men to mistake this feeling for true virtue and true philanthropy, when they may be in the lowest hell of selfishness. It may become, in this way, more demoralizing than a display of the most revolting vices, because it buries the individual character beneath a mass of sentiments and emotions in which a man or a woman may luxuriate without one feeling of penitence for their own transgressions, or one thought of dissatisfaction with their own wretchedly diseased moral state.