There is, perhaps, no present nation in the world more fitted to improve the english theatre than America. And why? Sparta, Athens, and Borne had been great republics, because the theatre instructed the people in that _alto sentire_, in that patriotic feeling of virtue, and noble actions, without which all the republics of the world had been turned into monarchies, despotism, and tyranny. The best historical facts are sorrowfully abandoned by a patriotic author, who he is prevented from instructing his country fellows, under a monarchy: and many, who did write tragedies, or comedies under despotism with their free genius, suffered the vigilance of the iron rule. Shakspeare himself, was under the vigilance of the despotic Elizabeth: and although the present government of England is now the best of Europe, the english subject does not, and had never understood the republican feeling of Sparta, Athens, or Rome. England had never had a republic: and the writer for a theatre must be a republican in his soul, and in the centre of a happy republic. He who is afraid of being chained in a dungeon, cannot tell to an unfortunate people all the evils of a monarchy with which a king sucks the people’s blood; and the theatre must needs be the palladium of truth, and people’s rights. It is a fact; America is a republic, and I hope, she will sustain herself as a republic with the improvements of the age. But, the greater number of the americans are from english blood, which, though brave, firm, and constant, has not yet felt that glowing, thrilling existence which inflamed those hearts of Sparta, Athens, and Rome with that heavenly flame of Prometheus. And the son cannot feel in his blood, that which the father did never feel himself. The republics of those times were nobility, and grandeur of thought; the republics of ours are but calculation, money, and selfishness. By degrees, education purifies our blood, and brings the human heart to feel what our ancestors did not feel themselves. But, before a nation will be able to reach the true, virtuous enthusiasm of a republic in which man feels himself as being a part of heaven, it seems, we are still doomed to pass in obscurity ages, and ages! The republican, worthy of our race, I mean, of all men throughout the world, must not think for himself. His country should think for him. His God, body, and soul is his country: and to die for her, is his greatest reward. A republic is a beneficient mother, who does not leave in want her best generous children: and virtue with these is wealth, and prosperity.