With us the Theatre is merely a public, out-door spectacle, of no importance, amusing the ordinary crowd, and free from immorality. Women take no part in the representations--boys, dressed as females, playing for women. But with the Barbarians the Theatre is an organisation of government, and receives the highest support. Women act, and are more popular with the spectators than the men. The first in estimation is the _Opera_. In this representation, as I have said in another place, the action goes on, all in _Singing_. To me nothing could be more ludicrous, more in defiance of all reason and nature. The most terrible emotions--fear, hate, envy, as well as the tender; love, affection, friendship--all sung, and not merely sung, but bellowed, screamed, shrieked, in every contortion of throat and mouth! In the Tragic performance the fierceness of the Barbarians delights in dreadful murders, plots, assassinations; in things which tear and lacerate human feelings, and bring despair and death! The Comic is as coarse in loose _buffoonery_ [Kro-sen-to-se] as the tragic is for an extreme of agony, based upon crime and baseness. But the most astonishing of all the representations upon the Stage is the _Ballet_. I should not dare nor desire to refer to this, were it not to illustrate a point in the Barbarian character, only too prominent; and to give further cause to the people of our _Flowery Land_ to be thankful to the Sovereign Lord, that He has not permitted such mark of degeneracy to stain us. The Ballet is supervised by a very High-Caste Lord. It is composed of a band of young women, selected for beauty of form and of limb. They appear in public nearly naked, or so clothed in tightest hose [ki-i-e] and draped in thinnest diaphanous fabric, that what is concealed is half disclosed and more piquant than if left uncovered. Troops of these appear--dazzling in white or pink--upon the stage-floor. Before they show themselves to the public, however, they parade, one by one (as I was truly informed), before the High-Caste Supervisor of the Ballet, who, with his assistants, duly examines the legs, arms, busts, and drapery, to see if all be in due order. The drapery is carefully measured to see if it be of the required length, and, if too short, must be extended to the knees. Not to cover anything, but to satisfy a pretence. For these transparent fabrics, aside from _that_ quality, are so contrived that they float off from the body and limbs with every movement--and the motions studied are those which produce this effect--twirling around rapidly being a chief feat. When the High-Caste is satisfied that there be nothing to offend the most delicate, and that all the demands of a pure _Christ-god_ morality are satisfied, he sends the young girls to the stage, and they appear in the _Ballet_.