passion for the entertainments of the theatre, and to waste unprofitably that time and money upon such frivolous diversions, which ought to be appropriated to the affairs and the necessities of the state, appeared to him to be the height of infatuation.” Could we raise the venerable philosopher from the grave to take a short survey of the present manners of our own countrymen, would he not find them an amazingly exact copy of those of the Athenians, in the times immediately preceding their subjection to Macedon? Would he not see the same series of daily and nightly diversions, adapted to the taste of every class of people, from the publick breakfasting (that bane to the time and industry of the tradesman) up to our modern orgies, the midnight-revels of the masquerade? If he censured the Athenians for throwing away so much time and attention upon the chaste and manly scenes of Sophocles and Euripides, what must he have thought of that strange _Shakespearomania_ (as I may term it) which prevailed so lately, and so universally amongst all ranks and all ages? Had he inquired of those multitudes who so long crowded both theatres at the representation of Romeo and Juliet, what were the striking beauties which so strongly and so repeatedly engaged their attention, could a tenth part of the affected admirers of that pathetick poet, have given him a more satisfactory answer than, “that it was the fashion?” would he not be convinced that fashion was the only motive, when he saw the same people thronging with the same eagerness, and swallowing the ribaldry of modern farce, and the buffoonery of pantomime with the same fury of applause? must he not have pronounced, that they as much exceeded the Athenians in thoughtless levity and folly, as they sunk beneath them in taste and judgment? For Plutarch does not find fault with the fine taste of the Athenians for the noble compositions of those incomparable poets; but for that excess of passion for the theatre, which, by setting up a new object of applause, had almost extinguished that publick virtue, for which they had been so greatly eminent; and made them more solicitous about the fate of a new tragedy, or the decision of the pretensions of two rival players, than about the fate of their country. But what idea must he have of the higher class of our people, when he saw those who should be foremost in a time of distress and danger, to animate the drooping spirit of their countrymen by the lustre of their example, attentive only to the unmanning trills of an opera; a degree of effeminacy which would have disgraced even the women of Greece, in times of greatest degeneracy. If he was informed that this species of diversion was so little natural to the rougher genius, as well as climate of Britain, that we were obliged to purchase and fetch over the worst performers of Italy at the expense of vast sums; what opinion must he form of our understanding? but if he was to see the insolence of