and he had, like ancient Moloch, the high gratification of seeing many of his devoted worshippers doomed to an untimely destruction. And yet, Sir, with such facts staring you in the face--with such confessions of convicted guilt--you have the temerity to maintain that the theatre is favourable to the cultivation and the growth of public and private virtue! Can you hope to gain proselytes to your opinion? Do you imagine that we are to be duped into the admission of an assertion which no argument can support, which recorded facts so unequivocally disprove, and which the worst men, in common with the best, reject as an insult offered to the obvious dictates of their understanding? Do you suppose that we have reached the dotage of our existence, when the intellect, paralyzed by some extraordinary visitation of Heaven, or worn out by the intensity of its own labours, is to sit down at the feet of absurdity, to receive the monstrous extravagancies of convicted falsehood as the lucid and resistless enunciations of oracular truth? No, Sir. A general belief is gone abroad, and it exists no less firmly amongst many of the admirers of the drama, than amongst its most determined opponents, that while the stage may be vindicated as a source of amusement, an attempt to vindicate it as the handmaid of virtue is no less disreputable to the understanding, than it is to the moral taste of the advocate, who, however dexterous he may be in his pleadings, labours under the disadvantage of appearing in court, after the judges have taken the verdict of an honest jury." _Mr. Proctor._--"I am now, Sir, decidedly of your opinion on this point; though I must confess I have often enjoyed a good play. The stage, in its present state, amuses many, and gratifies their taste, but it certainly does defile the imagination, and too often pollutes the heart; and where one young person receives any moral good, very many, I do believe, are corrupted and ruined. It may be defended as a source of amusement, but it is no handmaid of virtue; it is a very demon in the art of seduction. I had many qualms of conscience, when I did go to the theatre; but it is now more than two years since I entered one, and I must confess, that the present discussions have satisfied me, that I have acted a wise and a safe part by abstaining from going; nor will I ever go again, or allow any child of mine to go. In fact, I think it would be a public good, to shut up all the theatres in the country." _Mr. Falkland._--"My respected friend, I assure you, I am highly gratified to hear from your lips, such a candid confession and such a noble resolve; and I think my formal antagonist in these discussions, on cool reflection, will admit, that a passion for theatrical amusements had better be repressed than encouraged; as it is always hazardous, and sometimes fatal, especially to the young and incautious." UNITARIANISM RENOUNCED.