in these times of distress, to enjoy themselves on Sundays, confine themselves to a walk or drive into the country, with their wives and children, and a harmless regale of their pipes and their pots, their buggies and their bottles, or their carriages and their claret, as the case may be----" "Harmless!" said the great Hum-Fum, the buckles of his wig standing on end! "And I doubt much," continued the former speaker, "whether the very proceedings we are about to adopt will not sicken those of moderately pious lives, and----" "Sicken, sir!" interrupted the great Hum-Fum--"look at the navy, sir! Do you not perceive that the blessed institution, the Bethel Union, of which Master Phillips and myself are the main props, has taken the navy under its care--that we are to control the pleasures of the sailors--to correct their propensities--dock them of their girls and their grog--and allowance them even in pig-tail? If this experiment succeed--if the navy submit to this most proper control and purification, why should not the army and the laity generally submit to it too? What did Oliver Cromwell do, sir? Had not he a preaching army?----" Here a considerable noise of coughing took place; for though the ultra Hum-Fums were too much involved in zeal to think of analogies, the designing and radical Hums, who had merely joined the society for political purposes, felt that the mention of old Noll might throw the more moderate into a train of thoughts for which they had not as yet been sufficiently prepared. The confusion caused the great Gamboogee to cease; when a servant entered and whispered his Lordship. What the communication was we were unable to learn, as an adjournment was immediately moved and carried. The fact is--dinner was ready. MORAL THEATRICALS.[49] We have once or twice alluded to a scheme (forwarded to us by the Author) for rendering theatrical entertainments strictly moral; and, it appears to us, that no season can be better suited to its development than the present. The gentleman, to whose exertions in the behalf of virtue and decency, the public are even now greatly indebted, and whose plan, if carried into effect, will entitle him to the gratitude of the nation at large, is the Rev. Mr. Plumptree, who has published a volume of dramatic pieces illustrative of his purpose, which blend with deep interest a purity of thought and propriety of language rarely to be met with in the theatrical works of the day.