No one better supported the dignity of the profession than Charles Murray, a son of Sir John Murray, of Broughton, and originally intended for the medical profession. In his younger days, before he fell into the line of old men, at Covent Garden, he was playing at Wakefield, where he so spiritedly resented an insult flung at him as an actor, that the party he thereby offended made a public quarrel of it, and the town was divided into two factions. Murray refused to ask pardon on the stage, and on a night he was to play in the "Beaux' Stratagem," knowing the intentions of his enemy in front, he entered booted and spurred, and announced that, aware of the opposition, he was about to set out for Doncaster. Whereupon, his friends leaped from the boxes to the stage, declared he should not be driven from the theatre, and guarding the wings, they compelled Murray, dressed or undressed, as he was, to go through his part, and to remain on the stage throughout the piece, lest he should profit by an _exit_, to make his escape. On the other hand, poor Jack Owen, the "successor" of Henry Mossop, and the "real Zanga," as he used to call himself, was always able to defend his own cause. He was one night hissed while playing Polydore, in the "Orphan," when under the influence of the grape. He had just dismissed the Page, with "Run quickly, then, and prosperous be thy wishes," when his imperfect utterance raised a storm of hisses. But he turned the first words of the succeeding soliloquy to good account,--and advancing to the footlights, growled to the house, "Here I am alone and fit for mischief,"--putting himself in a fighting attitude, and moving the house to laughter by his new reading. The discipline of preparation for the stage in the older days was greater than it is now. It included strolling, slaving at country theatres, a course of probation at Norwich, Bath, York, and such towns,--after which there was an assured trial for an ambitious player, at every fresh season in London. But ere this point was reached, there was much to be endured.