Although I am a devotee of the opera, and am always glad when Drury Lane doors are open, and mourn over the decadence of the Lyceum, and wish that the Strand would succeed,[10] and longed for the day when the resuscitated Adelphi should open its doors, and rejoice at the prosperity of the Olympic, and think that one of the most rational and delightful night’s amusements in Europe, may be attained by the sight of the “Merchant of Venice” at the now closed (so far as Charles Kean is concerned) Princess’s, I have yet a tenderness, a predilection, an almost preference, for the Vic. There is a sturdy honesty of purpose, unity of action, sledge-hammer morality about the rubbishing melodramas, which are nightly yelled and ranted through on the Victoria stage, that are productive, I believe, of an intellectual tone, highly healthful and beneficial. Burkins, the garotter, who is now in hold in Pentonville for his sins, and is so promising a pupil of the chaplain, (having nearly learnt the Gunpowder Plot service and the prohibitions of consanguinity by heart,) has confidentially informed his reverend instructor that to the melodramas at the Victoria must be ascribed his ruin. It was the “Lonely Man of the Ocean” that led him to fall on Mr. Jabez Cheddar, cheesemonger, in Westminster Broadway, at two o’clock in the morning, split his skull open with a life-preserver, jump upon him, and rob him of eight pounds twelve, a silver hunting-watch, and a brass tobacco-box; at which confession the chaplain orders him more beef and books, and puts him down in the front rank for his next recommendatory report to the visiting magistrates. Partaking, in company with some other persons, of the opinion that Burkins adds to the characteristics of a ruffian and a blockhead, those of a hypocrite and a Liar, I do not necessarily set much store by the expression of _his_ opinions on the British drama. But when I find shrewd police-inspectors and astute stipendiary magistrates moralising over the dreadful effects of cheap theatres, attended as they are by the “youth of both sexes,” I deem them foemen worthy of my steel. Good Mr. Inspector, worthy Master Justice, where are the youth and the adults of both sexes to go in quest of that amusement, which I suppose you will concede to them, of some nature, the necessity? Are the churches open on week nights, and to such as they? and would you yourselves like to sit under Doctor Cumming, or even Mr. Spurgeon, from Saturday to Saturday? Are they to go to the Opera, to Almack’s, to the Carlton Club, or to the conversaziones of the Geological Society? You object, you say, to the nature of the entertainments provided for them. Come with me, and sit on the coarse deal benches in the coarsely and tawdrily-decorated cheap theatre, and listen to the sorrily-dressed actors and actresses—periwigged-pated fellows and slatternly wenches, if you like—tearing their passion to tatters, mouthing and ranting,