The entire extract from Archbishop Tillotson's sermon stands as follows: "I shall only speak a few words concerning plays, which, as they are now ordered among us, are a mighty reproach to the age and nations. To speak against them in general may be thought too severe, and that which the present age cannot so well brook, and would not perhaps be so just and reasonable, because it is very possible they might be so framed, and governed by such rules, as not only to be innocently diverting, but instructing and useful; to put some vices and follies out of countenance, which cannot perhaps be so decently reproved, nor so effectually exposed and corrected in any other way. But as the Stage now is, they are intolerable, and not fit to be permitted in a civilized, much less in a Christian nation. They do most notoriously minister both to infidelity and vice. By the profaneness of them, they are apt to instil bad principles into the minds of men, and lessen the awe and reverence which all men ought to have for God and religion; and by their lewdness they teach vice, and are apt to infect the minds of men, and dispose them to lewd and dissolute practices. And therefore, I do not see how any person pretending to sobriety and virtue, and especially to the pure and holy religion of our Blessed Saviour, can without great guilt, and open contradiction to his holy profession, be present at such lewd and immodest plays, much less frequent

them, as too many do, who yet would take it very ill to be shut out of the communion of Christians, as they would most certainly have been in the first and purest ages of Christianity." There is nothing here that the reasonable advocate of the drama can in the slightest degree object to or impugn. Let us fairly consider this opinion of one of the most distinguished preachers of the Gospel, and it amounts to this, the very nucleus of my argument; that an institution, containing in itself the elements of innocent amusement and moral instruction, has at a particular juncture been perverted to immoral and unchristian purposes; a result to which the higher avocations, as well as the ornamental accomplishments of life are equally liable. But there is nothing here of inherent depravity, unchangeable licentiousness, or utter incompatibility with the doctrine of Christ. Yet, when we remember that Archbishop Tillotson wrote and preached in the reign of Charles the Second, and that the plays he so justly denounces are the profligate emanations of that most profligate of all ages; when the moral lessons of Shakspeare, and his lofty delineations of character were laid on the shelf, to make room for the prurient abominations of the Behns, Wycherleys, Ethereges, Sedleys, and Durfeys of the day; writers, who, as Dr. Johnson remarked, "studied themselves," and drew from the sources of their own polluted taste; with whom "intrigue was plot, and obscenity was

wit;" whose names are synonymous with indelicacy, immorality, and profaneness-when we remember this, we are lost in wonder that Archbishop Tillotson did not, in his indignation, proscribe the total use, as well as the abuse of an art which had produced such baneful consequences; and pronounce an anathema as sweeping and unqualified as those, the justice of which we are now endeavouring to combat. The reign of Charles the Second presents a picture of national profligacy, which the historian blushes to record, and the reader sighs to believe. A libertine, unreclaimed by the misfortunes of his family, the fate of his father, or his own early years of banishment and adversity; in the full maturity of manhood, ascended the throne of his ancestors amidst the universal acclamations of the people, and at once surrendered himself up to all the unbridled license of a vicious temperament. He had no dawn of moderation, no early years of restraint like Nero ; from the begining to the end, his reign and life were marked by riot and debauchery. The court and the nobility readily imitated the contagious example of the monarch, and the whole nation became abandoned to the grossest sensuality. "The arts were prostituted in the cause of licentiousness, and the Drama of course did not escape the contamination.'

But the Theatre had no share in pro

*Calvert, in defence of the Stage.

E

ducing this state of moral debasement. It followed, where it had no power to lead. For several years previous to the death of Cromwell, the Theatres had been suppressed by decrees of the existing government; the actors were dispersed, many had taken arms on the king's side during the civil war, and more than one had honourably sealed their loyalty with their blood. The class of plays which immediately succeeded the Restoration, are renounced and disclaimed by the Drama, as unwholesome excrescences, infecting the very life blood of its existence. The Stage has driven them from its boards for ever.

"Shame has regain'd the post that vice betray'd,

And virtue call'd oblivion to her aid."*

The unredeemed vice of that period, carried through all gradations of the state, and infecting equally the manners and the morals of all classes, forms a subject of deep and powerful interest to the contemplative mind: and when we reflect on the great plague and fire of London, which occurred during the high season of debauchery, we discern in those tremendous visitings, as clear a manifestation of divine wrath to rouse the nation to repentance, as the pillar in the wilderness was a token of divine favour, to guide the Israelites to the Land of Promise.

The principal dramatic writers who imme

* Dr. Johnson's Prologue on the opening of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 1747.

diately followed the time of Charles the Second, Cibber, Congreve, Vanburgh, and Farquhar, were all more or less infected by the indecency of the school from whence they descended, although palliated by the most brilliant flashes of wit, and admirable sketches of character, of which the works of their predecessors were entirely destitute. All this class of plays is also banished from the Stage, with one or two exceptions, and even these, expurgated and refined as they are to suit the more polished taste, and let us hope the purer morals of the present day, are seldom acted, and scarcely ever attractive. Of this school, we may instance the comedy of the Provoked Husband, by Vanburgh and Cibber, which is still received with marked applause whenever it is brought forward. Both in its higher and lower plot, it contains a useful moral lesson, and as now performed, has nothing to object to, either on the score of grossness of manner, or freedom of expression. Speaking of this play, an eminent divine, Dr. Blair, whom I shall have occasion to quote more than once, says: "It is perhaps, on the whole, the best comedy in the English language; we are indeed surprized to find so unexceptionable a comedy proceeding from two such loose authors; for in its general strain it is calculated to expose licentiousness and folly, and would do honour to any Stage."

* Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, vol. ii.