on
so hearty and substantial, that we cannot afford our moral judgment,
in its deepest and most vital results, to compromise or slumber for
a moment. What is _there_ transacting, by no modification is made
to affect us in any other manner than the same events or characters
would do in our relationships of life. We carry our fire-side concerns
to the theatre with us. We do not go thither, like our ancestors,
to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our
experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of fate.
We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful
privilege of Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that neutral
ground of character, which stood between vice and virtue; or which in
fact was indifferent to neither, where neither properly was called in
question; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual
moral questioning--the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted
casuistry--is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the
interests of society. The privileges of the place are taken away
by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, of wrong. We bark
like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the scenic
representation of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety
that our morality should not take cold, we wrap it up in a great
blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze and sunshine.

I confess for myself that (with no great delinquencies to answer
for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond the diocese of
the strict conscience,--not to live always in the precincts of the
law-courts,--but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine a
world with no meddling restrictions--to get into recesses, whither the
hunter cannot follow me--

--Secret shades
Of woody Ida's inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove--

I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher and more healthy
for it. I wear my shackles more contentedly for having respired
the breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not know how it is with
others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of
Congreve's--nay, why should I not add even of Wycherley's--comedies. I
am the gayer at least for it; and I could never connect those sports
of a witty fancy in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to
imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much
as fairy-land. Take one of their c