Taking the middle of the last century as a period when dramatic exhibitions were generally well attended, let us inquire what there was in the condition and circumstances of the theatre at that period to have rendered this a matter of course. We reply at once, that plays were then as well written, as well _got up_, and as well acted, as any picture was then painted, or any novel or poem written. The drama was at that time on a perfect level with, or perhaps even superior to, the current literature of the day, or any other instrument of public amusement which existed. Nor was it beneath the standard of the general manners of society. It exhibited, in a gross enough manner, the vices of the age; but the people whose vices were exhibited were rendered insensible by those very vices to the grossness of the scene. The theatre is now in quite a different condition from what it was in then. Whether owing to the want of legislative enactments, which might encourage literary men in writing for the theatre, or to some other cause, our dramatic entertainments are now of a character much beneath or behind the age. Our acting plays are either the old stock, displeasing us with the exhibition of obsolete vices; or modern trash, full of exaggerated character and sentiment, trusting for success, perhaps, to romantic scenery and machinery; or literal transcripts of nursery fables. Our drama, overlooking some better qualities, is, in a great measure, a compound of childishness, indecency, buffoonery, and, to no small extent, of profanity; in every point of view fifty years in taste behind our current fictitious literature, which, in itself, is susceptible of great amendment. In Great Britain the drama has always appealed to the less serious and virtuous part of the community. At the time of the civil war, and after the re-establishment of the theatre at the Restoration, it was altogether a Cavalier thing, and, like the Cavalier party in general, too apt to make debauchery a mark of rectitude in politics. This character it has never entirely shaken off. With the exception of a certain number of mawkish and tawdry aphorisms scattered over our modern plays, they still maintain, in some measure, their old war against the decencies and proprieties of life. The truth is, the theatre has become so exclusively resorted to by a less serious part of the community, that it could hardly attempt to conciliate the other class, lest, in the vain effort, it lose the customers it has.