_Mr. Falkland._--"But it often puts forth a biting one, from under the folds of its concealment; yet, as you seem to dislike it, I will dismiss it, and return to the more grave form of debate. Permit me, then, to ask you, if the company into which the young are introduced at a theatre, does not form a very powerful objection against it?" _Mr. Talbot._--"This is an objection against theatrical amusements, which I have been expecting to make its appearance for some time; and now it is out, I am not unwilling to meet it. I will then confess, 'that the English box lobbies are too much disgraced by the open display of female prostitution,' and that too many of the baser sort of our own sex frequent the theatre; yet, as the wisest and the best are always to be found in attendance on the comic muse, we may very easily keep with them, and thus avoid that contagion of evil, to which you imagine we are necessarily exposed. We know that vice, like every other marketable commodity, will be offered for sale in all great public assemblages. But, Sir, can you see the vast majority of an audience rivetted on the scenic representation, without confessing that many a youthful passion is preserved from the _out-of-doors_ temptation to vice, by this intellectual occupation of his time within? London, and all large towns, are, by reason of their congregated numbers, hotbeds of vice; you know licentiousness would find other haunts, and not be one whit limited by the suppression of the theatre; it would be hard, indeed, that virtue should imprison itself, because vice frequented the same resort; on that principle we might not walk the great streets of the metropolis, in broad day light, because of the 'polluted' neighbours on all sides." _Mr. Falkland._--"Then you admit that the theatre is one of the haunts of vice; and yet you say that the wisest and the best are always to be found in attendance there, _and from choice_! How odd, that the wisest and the best of our wise and good men and women, young and old, should choose to go where the most profligate and licentious resort! Surely, you will not adduce their conduct on this point, as a conclusive argument in favour of their superior wisdom, or their superior love of virtue! You say, if we go, we may keep with them! But, how shall we know the wisest and the best from the most depraved, in such a promiscuous throng as usually crowd a theatre?--From instinct? or from some secret sign which, like that of the Masonic order, is concealed from every one but the initiated?" _Mr. Talbot._--"When I go to the theatre, if I go alone, I keep apart from others; and if I go in company, I keep with them; so that I have no intercourse with the general audience." _Mr. Falkland._--"Very possibly; but do all who attend the theatre adopt the same judicious maxim?" _Mr. Talbot._--"They may if they choose, and if they do not, they alone are to blame."