• THE ILLEGITEMATE DRAMA.
WR see that the Lord Chamberlain has interdicted the play of lack Shep- pard at the Victoria Theatre, and we can well understand the motives of the prohibition, yet we doubt its policy. It is true that representation of plays in which a thief is the hero may incite some few youths to take up the pro - fession of thieving, as novels are said to have done ; yet it is as certain that the extension of art and literature, even in such shapes as first attract the taste of the irregular classes, is calculated to enlarge their knowledge, to make them reflect, and to turn more away from the path of vice and crime than into it. Depend upon it, the dramatized sermon at the Victoria Theo- tre, on the hazards and unhappy ending of dissolute life, reached more earl that needed it than if it had been delivered from the pulpit, and it an-
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lightened many more than it tempted. The freer discussion is, in every form, even in the form of fiction and stage-plays, the better it works. A perfect freedom of our press has resulted in putting down sounility. There are undoubted differences between printed literature and a performance in the presence of assembled numbers, yet, we suspect, a much nearer ap- proach to free-trade in drama would be attended by similar results.
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