eare, the pride of Britain, was a player." To the
illustrious bard, the modern drama is indebted for its excellence. His
writings will remain for ever the grandest monument of a genius which
opened to him the whole heart of man, all the mines of fancy, all the
stores of nature, and gave him power beyond all other writers, to move,
astonish, and delight mankind. In the drama, the most interesting
emotions are excited; the dangerous passions of hate, envy, avarice, and
pride, with all their innumerable train of attendant vices, are detected
and exposed. Love, friendship, gratitude, and all those active and
generous virtues which warm the heart and exalt the mind, are held up
as objects of emulation. And what can be a more effectual method of
softening the ferocity, and improving the minds of the inconsiderate?
The heart is melted by the scene, and ready to receive an
impression--either to warn the innocent, or to appal the guilty; and
numbers of those who have neither abilities nor time for deriving
advantage from reading, are powerfully impressed through the medium
of the eyes and ears, with those important truths which while they
illuminate the understanding, correct the heart. The moral laws of the
drama are said to have an effect next after those conveyed from the
pulpit, or promulgated in courts of justice. Mr. Burke, indeed, has gone
so far as to observe that "the theatre is a better school of moral
sentiment than churches." The drama, therefore, has a right to find a
place; and to its professors are we indebted for what may justly be
considered one of the highest of all intellectual gratifications.

F.K.Y.

* * * * *

MEMORY.

(_For the Mirror_.)

How many a mortal bears a heavy chain,
Of bitter sorrow, 'neath thy iron reign,
And many a one, whose harder fate has given,
Some early woes, by thee to madness driven,
Sees the sad vision of some bygone day,
And thinks on what he hath seen with dismay:
So some lone murderer, wanders o'er the world
By thy dread arm to desperation hurl'd;
In vain he prays, or bends the lowly knee,
With fiendlike power, thou dragg'st him back with thee,
Point'st to some scene of early guilt and woe,
Opening the source from whence his sorrows flow.
As round the bark which feels the tempest's shock,
The lightning plays, and shows the fatal rock,
So memory brings our sorrows all to light
With vivid truth presents the