of Glasgow was excavated out of a rock, because he had
never before seen an edifice made of hewn stone and mortar. Thus not
only a false taste is circulated among the youth at large, but the very
fountain of taste is itself polluted. This is an evil which nothing but
a well-regulated body of competent critical authority can prevent. In
the prosecution of the intended work, an occasion will occur of pointing
out eras during which, even in the great metropolitan seat of the
English drama, the public taste suffered years of vitiation from
defective models being at the head of the stage. Till Garrick, led on by
Nature herself, introduced her school, the theatre presented a stage on
which scarce a vestige of the human character as it really existed, was
to be seen. But pompous monotony of speech held the highest praise, and
"DECLAMATION ROARED WHILE PASSION SLEPT."

Hitherto the theatre of Philadelphia has been too much resigned to the
licentiousness of bold, and blind opinion. Men of letters, with which
the city abounds, and who in every society are the natural guardians of
the public taste and morals, seem to have deserted this important trust.
Applause which ought to be measured out with scrupulous justice,
correctness and precision, has been by admiring ignorance, poured forth
in a torrent roar of uncouth and obstreperous _glee_ on the buffoon,
"the clown that says more than is set down for him," and on "the
robustious perriwig-pated fellow, who tears a passion all to rags,"
while chaste merit and propriety have often gone unrewarded by a smile.

If critical judgment were a matter of physical force or numerical
calculation, then indeed the roar of the multitude would be as
conclusive in reason, as it too often is in practical effect; but
criticism is a matter of intellectual estimate; and many acquirements go
to the composition of a well-qualified dramatic critic, to any one of
which, but a small number of the auditors of a play can, in the nature
of things, have the smallest pretensions. If indeed any man under the
assumption of the critic's name should attempt dogmatically to impose
his _dictum_ as a law upon the public, he would deserve to be repelled
with indignity and rebuke. All the genuine critic will attempt to do, is
to hold out those lights, with which his own study, experience, and
observation have supplied him, in order to enable the public to discern
more clearly what in the play or the actor is worthy of c