the prosecution of the intended work, an occasion will occur of pointing out eras during which, even in the great metropolitan seat of the English drama, the public taste suffered years of vitiation from defective models being at the head of the stage. Till Garrick, led on by Nature herself, introduced her school, the theatre presented a stage on which scarce a vestige of the human character as it really existed, was to be seen. But pompous monotony of speech held the highest praise, and "DECLAMATION ROARED WHILE PASSION SLEPT." Hitherto the theatre of Philadelphia has been too much resigned to the licentiousness of bold, and blind opinion. Men of letters, with which the city abounds, and who in every society are the natural guardians of the public taste and morals, seem to have deserted this important trust. Applause which ought to be measured out with scrupulous justice, correctness and precision, has been by admiring ignorance, poured forth in a torrent roar of uncouth and obstreperous _glee_ on the buffoon, "the clown that says more than is set down for him," and on "the robustious perriwig-pated fellow, who tears a passion all to rags," while chaste merit and propriety have often gone unrewarded by a smile. If critical judgment were a matter of physical force or numerical calculation, then indeed the roar of the multitude would be as conclusive in reason, as it too often is in practical effect; but criticism is a matter of intellectual estimate; and many acquirements go to the composition of a well-qualified dramatic critic, to any one of which, but a small number of the auditors of a play can, in the nature of things, have the smallest pretensions. If indeed any man under the assumption of the critic's name should attempt dogmatically to impose his _dictum_ as a law upon the public, he would deserve to be repelled with indignity and rebuke. All the genuine critic will attempt to do, is to hold out those lights, with which his own study, experience, and observation have supplied him, in order to enable the public to discern more clearly what in the play or the actor is worthy of censure or applause--of rejection or adoption. In the common operations of human life, every man is compelled by the necessity of his nature to take succedaneous aid from others. The mechanic in erecting the poorest building, or forming the most simple machine, is indebted for his means to the practical geometrician, and instrument maker, and the latter again, to the master of the science of mathematics. The practical surveyor or navigator finds it his interest to be governed by rules supplied by those whom study has furnished with the great elementary principles of science, and is contented to stand indebted to them for his means of determining, the area of his land, or the latitude and longitude at sea, without impugning the rights of those studious men who have given him the compendious rules and the tables by which he works. It is so with dramatic criticism.