who strut and shoulder their swords to the astonishment of every spectator. They tell me here, that people frequent the theatre in order to be instructed as well as amused. I smile to hear the assertion. If I ever go to one of their play-houses, what with trumpets, hallooing behind the stage, and bawling upon it, I am quite dizzy before the performance is over. If I enter the house with any sentiments in my head, I am sure to have none going away; the whole mind being filled with a dead march, a funeral procession, a cat-call, a jig, or a tempest.* There is, perhaps, nothing more easy than to write properly for the English theatre. I am amazed that none are apprenticed. to the trade. The author, when well acquainted with the value of thunder and lightning, when versed in all the mystery of sceneshifting, and trap-doors; when skilled in the proper periods to introduce a wire-walker, or a waterfall; when instructed in every actor's peculiar talent, and capable of adapting his speeches to the supposed excellence; when thus instructed, he knows all that can give a modern audience pleasure. One player shines in an exclamation, another in a groan, a third in a horror, a fourth in a start, a fifth in a smile, a sixth faints, and a seventh fidgets round the stage with peculiar vivacity; that piece, therefore, will succeed best, where each has a proper opportunity of shining: the actor's business is not so much to adapt himself to the poet, as the poet's to adapt himself to the actor. *["O! ne'er may folly seize the throne of taste, And, while it charms the ear, to mend the heart." The great secret, therefore, of tragedy-writing at present, is a perfect acquaintance with theatrical ah's and oh's; a certain number of these, interspersed with gods! tortures! rack! and damnation! shall distort every actor almost into convulsions, and draw tears from every spectator; a proper use of these will infallibly fill the whole house with applause. But, above all, a whining scene must strike most forcibly. I would advise, from my present knowledge of the audience, the two favorite players of the town to introduce a scene of this sort in every play. Towards the middle of the last act, I would have them enter with wild looks and outspread arms: there is no necessity for speaking, they are only to groan at each other, they must vary the tones of exclamation and despair through the whole theatrical gamut, wring their figures into every shape of distress, and when their calamities have drawn a proper quantity of tears from the sympa thetic spectators, they may go off in dumb solemnity at different doors, clasping their hands, or slapping their pocket-holes this, which may be called a tragic pantomime, will answer every purpose of moving the passions as well as words could have done, and it must save those expenses which go to reward an author. All modern plays that would keep the audience alive, must be conceived in this manner; and indeed, many a modern play is made up on no other plan. This is the merit that lifts up the heart, like opium, into a rapture of insensibility, and can dismiss the mind from all the fatigue of thinking: this is the cloquence that shines in many a long-forgotten scene, which has been reckoned excessively fine upon acting; this the lightning that flashes no less in the hyperbolical tyrant, "who breakfasts on the wind," than in little Norval, "as harmless as the babe unborn." Adieu. LETTER LXXX. THE EVIL TENDENCY OF INCREASING PENAL LAWS, OR ENFORCING EVEN THOSE ALREADY IN BEING WITH RIGOR. From the same. I have always regarded the spirit of mercy which appears in the Chinese laws with admiration.* An order for the execution of a criminal is carried from court by slow journeys of six miles a-day, but a pardon is sent down with the most rapid dispatch. If five sons of the same father be guilty of the same offence, one of them is forgiven, in order to continue the family, and comfort his aged parents in their decline. Similar to this, there is a spirit of mercy breathes through the laws of England, which some erroneously endeavor to suppress; the laws, however, seem unwilling to punish the offender, or to furnish the officers of justice with every means of acting with severity. Those who arrest debtors are denied the use of *["The most remarkable thing in the Chinese code is its great reasonableness, clearness, and consistency; the business-like brevity and directness of the various provisions, and the plainness and moderation of the language in which they are expressed. There is nothing here of the monstrous verbiage of most other Asiatic productions; none of the superstitious deliration, the miserable incoherence, the tremendous non-sequiturs and eternal repetitions of those oracular performances; but a clear, concise, and distinct series of enactments, savoring throughout of practical judgment and European good sense, and, if not always conformable to our improved notions of expediency in this country, in general approaching to them more nearly than the codes of most other nations."-Ed. Rev. vol. xvi. p. 481: critique on Sir George Staunton's Leu Lee, or Penal Code of the Chinese. "The edition of the penal code of China circulated in a cheap form for the benefit of the public, is so concisely framed as to be comprehended in little more space than is occupied by one of our statutes. Indeed, the whole code does not contain two thousand different characters or words; so studious have the legislators of China been to simplify and adapt it to common capacities." -Quarterly Rev. No. cxii. p 504, (1836 ) ] arms; the nightly watch is permitted to repress the disorders of the drunken citizens only with clubs; justice, in such a case, seems to hide her terrors, and permits some offenders to escape rather than load any with a punishment disproportioned to the crime. Thus it is the glory of an Englishman, that he is not only governed by laws, but that these are also tempered by mercy: a country restrained by severe laws, and those too executed with severity (as in Japan), is under the most terrible species of tyranny; a royal tyrant is generally dreadful to the great, but Lumerous penal laws grind every rank of people, and chiefly those least able to resist oppression, the poor. It is very possible thus for a people to become slaves to laws of their own enacting, as the Athenians were to those of Draco. "It might first happen," says the historian, "that men with peculiar talents for villainy attempted to evade the ordinances already established; their practices, therefore, soon brought on a new law levelled against them; but the same degree of cunning which had taught the knave to evade the former statutes, taught him to evade the latter also; he flew to new shifts, while justice pursued with new ordinances; still, however, he kept his proper distance, and whenever one crime was judged penal by the state, he left committing it, in order to practice some unforbidden species of villainy. Thus the criminal against whom the threatenings were denounced always escaped free; while the simple rogue alone felt the rigor of justice. In the mean time, penal laws became numerous; almost every person in the state, unknowingly, at different times offended, * ["I have often wondered," says Kæmpfer, " at the laconic style of those tablets which are hung up on the roads to notify the emperor's pleasure. There is no reason given how it came about that such a law was made; no mention of the lawgiver's view and intention; nor any graduated penalty put upon the violation thereof. The bare transgression of the law is capital, without any regard to the degree or heinousness of the crime, or the favorable circum stan ces the offender's case may be accompanied with."-History of Japan.] and was every moment subject to a malicious prosecution." In fact, penal laws, instead of preventing crimes, are generally enacted after the commission; instead of repressing the growth of ingenious villainy, only multiply deceit, by putting it upon new shifts and expedients of practising it with impunity. Such laws, therefore, resemble the guards which are sometimes imposed upon tributary princes, apparently indeed to secure them from danger, but in reality to confirm their captivity. Penal laws, it must be allowed, secure property in a state, but they also diminish personal security in the same proportion; there is no positive law, how equitable soever, that may not be sometimes capable of injustice. When a law, enacted to make theft punishable with death, happens to be equitably executed, it can at best only guard our possessions; but when, by favor or ignorance, justice pronounces a wrong verdict, it then attacks our lives, since, in such a case, the whole community suffers with the innocent victim: if, therefore, in order to secure the effects of one man, I should make a law which may take away the life of another, in such a case, to attain smaller good, I am guilty of a greater evil; to secure society in the possession of a bauble, I render a real and valuable possession precarious. And indeed the experience of every age may serve to vindicate the assertion: no law could be more just than that called lesæ majestatis, when Rome was governed by emperors. It was but reasonable, that every conspiracy against the administration should be detected and punished; yet what terrible slaughters succeeded in consequence of its enactment! proscriptions, stranglings, poisonings, in almost every family of distinction: yet all done in a legal way, every criminal had his trial, and lost his life by a majority of witnesses And such will ever be the case, where punishments are numerous, and where a weak, vicious, but above all, where a mercenary magistrate is concerned in their execution: such a man desires |