Sir WALTER SCOTT, after the usual toasts to the King and the Royal Family, requested, that gentlemen would fill a bumper as full as it would hold, while he would say only a few words. He was in the habit of hearing speeches, and he knew the feeling with which long ones were regarded. He was sure that it was perfectly unnecessary for him to enter into any vindication of the dramatic art, which they had come here to support. This, however, he considered to be the proper time and proper occasion for him to say a few words on that love of representation which was an innate feeling in human nature. It was the first amusement that the child had--it grew greater as he grew up; and, even in the decline of life, nothing amused so much as when a common tale is well told. The first thing a child does is to ape his schoolmaster, by flogging a chair. It was an enjoyment natural to humanity. It was implanted in our very nature, to take pleasure from such representations, at proper times, and on proper occasions. In all ages the theatrical art had kept pace with the improvement of mankind, and with the progress of letters and the fine arts. As he had advanced from the ruder stages of society, the love of dramatic representations had increased, and all works of this nature had been improved in character and in structure. They had only to turn their eyes to the history of ancient Greece, although he did not pretend to be very deeply versed in ancient history. Its first tragic poet commanded a body of troops at Marathon. The second and next, were men who shook Athens with their discourses, as their theatrical works shock the theatre itself. If they turned to France, in the time of Louis XIV., that era in the classical history of that country, they would find that it was referred to by all Frenchmen as the golden age of the drama there. And also in England, in the time of queen Elizabeth, the drama began to mingle deeply and wisely in the general politics of Europe, not only not receiving laws from others, but giving laws to the world, and vindicating the rights of mankind. (_Cheers._) There had been various times when the dramatic art subsequently fell into disrepute. Its professors had been stigmatized: and laws had been passed against them, less dishonourable to them than to the statesmen by whom they were proposed, and to the legislators by whom they were passed. What were the times in which these laws were passed? Was it not when virtue was seldom inculcated as a moral duty, that we were required to relinquish the most rational of all our amusements, when the clergy were enjoined celibacy, and when the laity were denied the right to read their Bibles? He thought that it must have been from a notion of penance that they erected the drama into an ideal place of profaneness, and the tent of sin. He did not mean to dispute, that there were many excellent persons who thought differently from him, and they were entitled to assume that