While the theatres are exercising that power upon the Metropolitan
public which is vulgarly symbolized by a "chip in the porridge," Dr. Kinkel, a German celebrity, is steadily marching through a course of twelve lectures on the drama and its influence, at Willie's Nouns. He ingeniously points out a connexion between the Rlizabethan plays and the earlier mysteries; showing how the English drama really sprang from the soil, while that of France was artificially introduced by the learned. The fact is unquestionable, but is accompanied by another fact far more singular, which perhaps Dr. Kinkel may touch upon hereafter. The French are the only nation who can be said at present to possess a national drama, and yet there is no violent disruption from the school artificially founded in the days of Louis Quatorze. Is it that the drama is like cer- tain hothouse fruits, which arc brought to higher perfection when they are exotics than they attain when they are natives ?
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