ous Johnson constantly did, we can only say
in the words of one of Shakspeare's clowns--"God comfort thy capacity."

One example more. Whatever his political errors may have been, the
present old king of England can never be suspected of coldness in
matters of divinity, or of heterodoxy in religion. His fault in that way
leans to the other side--for it is doubted by the most intelligent men
in England whether his zeal does not border on excess. He has all his
life too taken counsel from those he thought the best divines; yet he
has done much to encourage the stage, and greatly delighted in scenic
representations--particularly in comedy. But as a much stronger proof of
his esteem for the drama, we will barely mention one fact: When his
majesty first read Arthur Murphy's tragedy of the Orphan of China, he
sent the poet a present of a thousand guineas.

The notion that the theatre should be avoided as a stimulant to the
passions deserves some respect on account of its antiquity; for it is as
old as the great grand-mother of the oldest man living. In good times of
yore, when ladies were not so squeamish as they are now about words,
because they did not know their meaning, but were more cautious of
facts, because the meaning of facts cannot be misunderstood, young men
had a refuge from the temptations of the stage in the reserved
deportment and full clothing of domestic society, we cannot wonder that
the good old ladies who abhorred the slightest immodesty in dress
little, if at all less than they abhorred actual vice, should urge to
their sons the necessity of keeping aloof from the allurements of the
theatre. If at that time the costume of the stage differed essentially
from that of private life, and was the reverse of modest, or if the
actresses indulged in meretricious airs which dared not be shown in
domestic society, there was a very just pretence, or rather indeed there
was the most cogent reason for preaching against the theatre. But at
this day, no hypothesis of the kind can be allowed. That beautiful young
women ornamented with every decoration which art can lend to enhance
their charms will perhaps excite admiration and licentious desires, is
true; but that those arts are more generally practised, or those
incitements more strongly or frequently played off on the boards of the
theatre than in respectable private life, our eyes forbid us to believe.
He who looks from the ladies on the stage to those seated on the