own sex, I might urge this argument to their patriotism more at length; but there are other considerations which are more peculiarly appropriate to you. If an enlightened love of country be opposed to your attendance at the Theatre, still more opposed to such a practice is a just sense of what is due to yourselves. For how can you reconcile your presence there with female delicacy and self-respect?-to be entertained with rehearsals and exhibitions which would be scandalous in any lady's drawing-room?-nay to be even seen there, where apart from the indecencies of the stage itself, the modesty of your sex is scandalized by the very presence of the audience? It is not enough to say of the company at a playhouse, that indecent characters are there the place is rank and noisome with them; the vulgar and profane, the dissolute and lost to shame, resort in crowds thither as if it were their own assembly and proper place of meeting, and the virtuous and refined are altogether the lesser number-the poor and shamed minority. Where the vile are entertained, the virtuous are scandalized, and where the vulgar applaud, the refined suffer indignity. : The late introduction of Madame Hutin at the Bowery, the managers, or their hireling writers, tell us, was a" bold experiment." So it doubtless was. But upon whom or what was the experiment made? Upon the moral sense of the rabble in the gallery? Upon the manly decency of the apprentices, and clerks, and transient men in the pit? No, but upon the modesty of the ladies upon the shrinking delicacy which the managers feared might still reside in the pure bosoms of those I am addressing. For they hesitated whether after all your discipline in their "school of moral sty," you were yet quite prepared for the creature of the French stage : they introduced to you, and for whom they seemed to expect your quiet sufferance out of regard to the less fastidious of the audience, if not you welcoming applauses on your own account. It was at your expense alone, of all who composed their "splendid house," that they boasted of the "success" of their experiment, and that "there was now nothing to fear." But their vaunting was libellous. Your drooping heads told them, that yours was not yet that easy modesty which might be thus far presumed upon without offence; and to recover your complacency, they added more fig-leaves to their Parisian favorite's apron. But the object was gained. It sufficed for the present. The crowd with one voice was with them, and your frown was not followed by your absence. They penitently restored an inch while you graciously yielded an ell. They respectfully humoured your prejudices, and you condescendingly forgave their licentiousness. Vice always puts on meekness when virtue looks distressed, and seduction is a most respectful wooer. It would be rudeness to say, you are in the school of apt masters, and that they will make one attainment of the scholar subservient to another. But I may be permitted to remark, that none know better than the managers of theatres, that the transition from the rudiments to the higher branches is by successive and easy steps. And though they will not attempt to overcome your prejudices, as they call your modest scruples, all at once, yet, it will not be, because they do not understand the arts of their profession, if, one by one, they do not overcome them all at last. In respect to Madame Hutin it was very natural that her Bowery friends should forgive her, for Folly, as well as Wisdom, is justified of her children; but as it respects the public generally, we may thank the "enterprising manager" that he has called forth its voice in such a manner as shows, not merely its disgust at the exhibition of French nudities among us, but its virtuous indignation at the whole mass of theatrical abominations. For, not to make too much of Madame Hutin, as though hers were an individual shame, there are a thousand sins against decency, scarcely less heinous than her performances ;-things which equally offend modesty and shock piety, and to speak of which were to speak of matters of common notoriety. Your popular plays abound with them. And these things are exhibited for your amusement? But if they are, and you can regard them with complacency; nay, if you can suffer them with any degree of patience, if you do not feel that every virtuous sentiment of your bosoms is outraged by them, what is the world to think of your respect for modesty, for piety, and for yourselves? 66 It might be asked too, what opinion your male acquaintances will form, your gallant friends especially who go with you to the Theatre, and scan your countenances while you heed the play. For, depend upon it, the effect of these experiments" will not escape their scrutiny. And be assured, the conclusion they will form will not flatter you; for your very presence there will more than contradict an occasional tinge upon your cheek, while the modesty that can encounter every grossness abroad, will naturally be regarded as little better than prudery at home. True modesty is not the pliant osier, that does not fear the storm: it is rather the timid sensitive-plant, that shrinks from the touch of rudeness. What apology you may form in respect to the indecencies of the stage, I cannot easily imagine. To say you admit them for their own sake, is to deny your respect for virtue. To say you bear with them for the sake of the better parts of the performances, is to make amusement of more account than decency it is to sacrifice your self-respect to your love of pleasure. To say you suffer them because your acqaintance do, is to say propriety is with you a thing of fashion. You are drifters with the current be it clear or muddy. be it clear or muddy. To say you tolerate them, like good republicans, in deference to the loose majority of the house, is to sanction their profligacy, and consent to your own reproach. You condescend to a compromise with the vile, that you may share with them the amusements of the place. In common fairness, you can do no less. It were a hard case, if privileges which equally belong to all, were made the monopoly of a few.-Verily, the theatre is a most peculiar institution!-without its parallel, except perhaps in the ancient feasts of Cybele and Saturn. Here virtue stoops to vice and shame is privileged; wealth and fashion forget their aristocracy, and elegance and taste consort with more than plebeian coarseness. If in these reflections I have dwelt exclusively on the grosser immoralities of the stage, it is because they are of a more obvious and tangible character, and because circumstances have lately directed the public mind to them; and not because they have exclusively affected my own mind. For corrupting as the looser immoralities of the stage are, particularly to my own sex, it may be doubted whether other effects of the drama are not even more pernicious to the female mind. A mother might fear the polluting comedy for her son, but more the absorbing tragedy for her daughter. Pride, ambition, and revenge, lust, seduction, and murder, are, I need not tell you, the materials of which the tragedy is composed; and it is not to be ima 1 gined that the delicate mind of a female, young and imaginative as she may be, can be agitated by scenes like these, heightened as their effect is, by the accompaniments of the stage-the scenery, the acting, the night season, the contagious sympathy of a crowdand yet suffer no depravation. If she be not herself transferred to the world of fiction which enchains her senses, and become a sombre and artificial being, the effect will a least be something worse. The holy sympathies of nature, which God gave her for other purposes than pastime, by constantly perverting, she at length becomes bereft of; and acquires something of the same recklessness of feeling which she witnesses in the drama. Indeed, it is not to be conceived, that she should make herself familiar with all the desperate passions and dark adventures of human life, as matters of amusement, and lose nothing of the native delicacy and incorruptness of her mind. But it was not my design to analyze the stage, nor to attempt to show its various evil influences. Much is to be set down to wasted sympathies and perverted sensibilities to vice made attractive and virtue made repulsive-to time misspent, money misapplied, and a heart deceived. Particularly, it was not my design to speak of the repugnance of the stage to the spirit of the gospel; although from this source I might derive the most impressive considerations. If the language of Religion is 'Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor revilers, shall inherit the kingdom of God,' how shall she not utter her anathema against the nursing mother of all these abominations? And how shall her divine influences follow you thither-where your countenance is with her enemies, and your hands help to build the strong hold of her adversary? And though you may escape the evil, you cannot but know that to thousands of others the theatre is the gateway to ruin; and you cannot but reflect how repugnant it must be to Christian benevolence, if through encouraging the theatre you contribute to the spread of a moral pestilence around you, or if haply by your example, you should lead even one fellow-being to the chambers of death. But I will not dwell on this view of the subject. I have wished chiefly to suggest to you other considerations, and such as are pecul iar to your sex. I have wished to address you as ladies-as those in whom I might find modesty, intelligence, and virtue, and all the elevated characteristics of your sex. And now may I not ask such, if the respect which is due to yourselves and to your sex, if a just regard for the common decencies of life, if every sentiment of virtue, of piety, and of patriotism, rises up in remonstrance against the theatre, are you not persuaded to withdraw yourselves forever from that corrupting institution ? Do you say, your withdrawing will not deter others? It is always well to do what is right, do others as they may. But you underrate your influence. Let the theatre once be forsaken of you, and depend upon it, the respectable of the other sex will promptly retire with you. They will hardly think it for their credit to be where plumes and bonnets are ashamed to keep them in countenance. The merely decent will soon follow; and the place will then be left only to the vile, and no respectable man will think of showing himself at the playhouse, any more than he will think of being seen at certain other places of resort, of which the playhouse will then be regarded as the chief. To the vile then let it be left. It is their proper house of assembly. Do this act of justice to yourselves and to your country, and you shall at least receive the gratitude of one who is A BROTHER. paragraphs. Then follows usually another class of things which are amiss; namely, lukewarmness in professors, errors in doctrine, heretical teachers, conformity to the REMARKS ON THE USUAL STYLE OF world, fashionable amusements, &c. THE ANNUAL NARRATIVES OF ECCLESIASTICAL BODIES. I AM accustomed to look over the published "minutes" of our principal ecclesiastical assemblies, and particularly their annual "narratives of the state of religion within their bounds." I have just laid down that of the last General Assembly at Philadelphia. It would seem to me that a large number of clergymen, coming together from all parts of the land, might bring with them a great deal of definite and valuable information respecting the moral condition of the country, and that this information, properly embodied and sent forth, might produce some good impression on the public mind. Our annual “ narratives," however, are commonly written in such a manner as to produce, I apprehend, but very little interest. There is a certain round of topics, and a certain sameness of style in them from year to year. They resemble in this respect our annual thanksgiving proclamations, which, with only a change of date, might answer for a decade of years as well as for one, and might as well be stereotyped as to put the printers to the annual trouble of setting up the types anew. They uniformly give us a mixture of light and shade, of lamentation and rejoic ing." Thus, for the dark shades, we have a regular report of certain immoralities which, the meeting laments, still exist in divers parts of the land, as if we were in the annual expectation of these immoralities having come to an end-namely, sabbath-breaking, profane swearing, intemperance, gambling, and the like. These several topics are commonly spread out into as many VOL. 1.-No. VIII. 53 It is not obvious to me what benefit is effected by the stated and general mention of these things as matters of fact, from year to year. It conveys no information, imparts no impulse to the public mind, and originates no measures; while it does impart prolixity to a document which, being intended for general perusal, ought to be as dense and forcible as possible. If a particular vice exists peculiarly in a particular place, or if any public immorality is becoming increasingly and alarmingly prevalent in the land, then the distinct and solemn reprehension of it by a venerable assembly of ministers may have some salutary ef fect; but I look for no such effect from an annual, and very general, and matter-of-course mention, of immoralities which exist in no new degree, and in no place in particular, but are the common immoralities of the world,-which have existed and will exist every where among men, till a generation shall be born more happy than the world has yet seen. I attach, indeed, no great importance to these strictures, but it may be worth suggesting whether the introduction of the topics I am speaking of, may not as well be, at least sometimes intermitted, if not generally omitted. There are several respects in which the kind of documents I am considering might be animadverted upon; but I shall not particularize them. They should be written, if they are worth writing at all, with more freshness of matter and manner--in a word, with more elaborateness and force of style, and more fullness and definiteness of information. Whether they might be made to embody such a mass of collected facts as should give us an whom he addresses! This I witnessed, some twenty years ago, in one of the ablest ministers this country has produced; and it afforded me a durable caution. V. REMARKS ON MUSICAL TASTE. nually a distinct moral map of our country-such a map, for example, as was furnished by the "Macedonian Cry" at the date of its publication, and whether they might exhibit the collected results of inquiries on a great variety of subjects, such as prisons, pauperism, the statistics of intemperance, (and not merely the general fact of its existence,) the education of the young HE, who should walk forth for -in some States shamefully unattended to if not unprovided for, enjoyment at eventide, if accompatogether with many other things resnied by one entirely insensible to the glories of heaven and the lovepecting which extensive informaliness of earth, would find his own tion is desirable, but not easily attainable by local societies, or legisemotions most sadly disturbed, as tures--whether these things, I say, he might utter them to his heedless may be comprised in a paper which companion; and would most heartprofesses to inform us of the morally regret, that he went not alone to state of the country, I merely set down as a query. But it surely seems to me, that a congress of divines might give us something more than a few trite remarks on a few common-place subjects. CIVILIS. To the Editor of the Christian Spectator. YOUR Correspondent, Franklin, in your number for June, remarks that " a writer under the signature of V. in the Spectator, seems to think that Walker's dictionary is good authority for pronunciation." As it was no part of my object to question his authority in this particular, I did not directly do it. I am glad F. has taken this occasion to give the information contained in his short article. If the opinion of an anonymous writer can be of any weight, I wish to say that I am unwilling even to seem to think Walker's dictionary," or in fact any other dictionary, good authority for departing from the current pronunciation of "respectable people" in the region where we reside. Why should a lawyer lose his cause, or a preacher his grand object, by becoming a polite barbarian to those 66 indulge his admiration and his love. the brook, and of those beings The sympathies of the grove and whose inarticulate voices proclaimtheir interest in the scene, would be to him more pleasant than the blighting presence of his fellow, whose soul disdains to mingle with the spirit that breathes around him, vain the smallest tribute of praise. and from whom creation solicits in The traveller, who has made his last effort to gain an Alpine summit, from which the prospect of grandeur and beauty is so delightfully overwhelming to his soul, exhausted as he is, would rather expose himself to all the dangers of solitude, than be attended by another whose feelings will give no responses to what is calling so loudly from every object beneath his eye. His excitement might almost prompt him to exclaim; Better for me to die here alone, than to be aided by one in whom I must witness so cruel, so unnatural a destitution of the noblest, the sublimest feelings of the soul. In each of these instances, the insensibility manifested seems to the enraptured heart, not less inconsistent and unexpected, than the blast of the wintry storm, breaking in on the playful scenes of |
