"She Stoops to Conquer," are the greenest spots in the Dramatic waste of the period of which we are speaking. They are worthy of the Author of the "Vicar of Wakefield;" and to praise them more highly is impossible. Wit, without licentiousness; Humour, without extravagance; brilliant and elegant dialogue; and forcible but natural delineation of character; are the excellencies with which his pages are prodigally strewn.

Cumberland was the last, and the best of the Sentimental School. His Genius was of too masculine a character to submit entirely to the fetters which the popular prejudices would impose upon it; and his taste too pure, to relish the sickly viands with which the public appetite was palled. But, even in the extinction of this School, we cannot congratulate ourselves in the elevation of any thing better in it's place. "Bad begins, but - worse remains behind." Our present Lecture has been a history of the gradual declension of the British Drama:

"We have fallen upon our gloomy days,

Star after star decays;

Every bright name that shed

Light o'er the land is fled!"

The Shakspearean School was succeeded by that of Congreve: there we sunk a step, but we

were on a lofty eminence still. The Congreve School gave place to that of the Sentimental Artists. This was a more fearful declension: but even here we met with elegant writers, although we looked in vain for skilful or interesting Dramatists. The next " change that comes o'er the spirit of our dream," presents us with the ultra German horrors of Lewis, and his School. This is the very Antipodes of the Sentimental School: the badge and banner of one is the cambric handkerchief; of the other the gory dagger. Instead of high flown sentiments of virtue and honour, we have murderers and spectres; trap-doors and long corridors; daggers and poison-bowls; faces whitened over with meal, and hands looking as sanguinary as red paint can make them. This School has also had it's day, and fallen into the "sere and yellow leaf," to make way for Juvenile Roscii, Elephants, and rope-dancers! Various entertainments have since been resorted to for the edification and amusement of the enlightened public. Sometimes it has been treated with the sight of a Monkey which can dance on the tight rope like a man; and at others, with a Man who can climb trees and crack nuts like a Monkey. For such refined amusements as these have we exchanged the Genius of our early Dramatists: a jewel, which, as Shylock

says,

"we would not have given for a wilderness of monkeys." Occasionally, however, a gleam of light has broken in upon the general gloom of the Dramatic hemisphere; and the names of Foote, Garrick, Colman the Elder, and, "the greatest is behind," Sheridan, shew, amidst the surrounding mass of dulness and folly, like the stars of heaven, more fiery by night's blackness.

Sheridan is, indeed, a golden link which connects us with the Authors of better days. He has wit; pure, polished, genuine wit. He has humour; not, perhaps, of quite so pure an order, a little forced and overstrained, but it's root is in Nature, whatever aberrations it may spread into in it's branches. His dialogue is of matchless brilliancy; so brilliant as to enchain the attention, and to blind us to the grand defect of his Plays, their want of action, and of what is technically called, business. This defect alone shuts out Sheridan from taking his place by the side of the elder Dramatists, and assigns him his situation a step lower among the writers of the age of Charles. He is, however, free from their impurities of thought and language; their equal in wit, and their superior in genuine humour.

The Drama of the present day is, with some few exceptions, a compound of all the vices which

characterised the preceding Schools; excepting, I am happy to say, the profligacy of the writers of the Restoration. If we are dull, we are, at least, decent. The Dramas, however, which are now produced, are as lawless and irregular as the writers of the Elizabethan School; turgid and bombastic as the Tragedies which succeeded it; mawkish as the Comedies of the Sentimentalists; and extravagant and outrageous as the maddest productions of Germany. The works of Joanna Baillie- unquestionably the greatest Dramatist who has appeared here since the Restoration,are driven from the Stage; and, although Shakspeare is still endured, he is made to bow his "eminent tops to our low heads;" his Tragedies must have a happy ending, and his Comedies must be interspersed with Songs." But then, the tricks of Harlequin, the mysteries of Melo Drame, the prancing of real horses, and the tumbling of real water; these are surely enough to compensate for the absence of Shakspeare, and all his trumpery.

We have passed, it may be thought, a severe censure upon the present state of the English Drama; but, we speak it "more in sorrow than in anger." When we consider the splendid heritage of talent and genius which we derive from our ancestors; when we recollect the immortal pro

ductions which have been bequeathed to the English Stage, from the days of Shakspeare to those of Sheridan; when we mark, too, the energy and intelligence of the present day, as shewn in every other quarter, while the Stage alone is usurped by imbecility and dulness;—the mingled feelings of shame and astonishment are too powerful for their expression to be repressed. The causes of this national degradation are various. One of the most obvious and powerful, unquestionably is the enormous size of the Theatres. The Music of the voice, the magic of the eye, the passion and propriety of the gestures, these are the true and legitimate elements of Dramatic effect; but these, in the immense area upon which they are exerted, are lost to the largest proportion of the auditory. Hence, the actor distorts his features, strains his voice, and throws himself into violent and unnatural attitudes; and when it is at length found that even these fail of producing the requisite effect, then pomp and shew, decoration and noise, unmeaning bustle and preposterous parade, are called in to fill up the melancholy hiatus.

Accordingly, the Managers and the public sustain a re-action from each other; the former create in the latter an appetite for Spectacle and shew; and the appetite thus created in the latter, calls upon