Our literature is remarkably rich in old dramas; but they are of little use to the present age.  Fastidiousness and hypocrisy have grown for many years, slowly but surely, and have at last arrived at such a pitch, that there is hardly a line in the works of our old comic writers, which is not reprobated as immoral, or at least vulgar.  The excessive squeamishness of taste of the present day is very unfavourable to the genius of comedy, which demands a certain liberty and a freedom from restraints.  This morbid delicacy is a great evil, for it renders the time of limitation in all comic writings exceedingly short.  The ephemeral duration of the fashion, which is all the production of a man of wit can now enjoy, discourages authors.  There is no motive to bestow much care on such compositions, and they fall below the ambition of men of real talents—­for the best part of the reward of literary labour consists in the lasting admiration of posterity; and as some new fastidiousness will consign to oblivion, in a short time, every comic production, it is plain that such a reward cannot be reasonably anticipated.  We are more completely, than any other nation, the victims of fashion.  Everything here must either be in the last and newest fashion, or it must cease to be.  The despotism of fashion in dress, in furniture, and in the pattern of the edges of plate, is perhaps inconvenient—­it is, however, not very important; but it is a cruel grievance that it should interfere with and annihilate an entire department of our literature.

HOURS OF REPRESENTATION.

Dramatic representations were formerly given, not only in Greece and Rome, but in England also, in the daytime, and in the open air.  “The Globe, Fortune, and Bull, were large houses, and partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight;” and plays were first acted in Spain in the open courts of great houses, which were sometimes covered, in whole or in part, with an awning to keep off the sun.  The word sale, which is used as a stage direction, meaning not exit, but he enters, i.e. he comes out of the house into the open air, is an evidence of the old practice.  We are inclined to think that the morning is more favourable to dramatic excellence than the evening.  The daylight accords with the truth and sobriety of nature, and it is the season of cool judgment:  the gilded, the painted, the tawdry, the meretricious—­spangles and tinsel, and tarnished and glittering trumpery—­demand the glare of candle-light and the shades of night.  It is certain, that the best pieces were written for the day; and it is probable, that the best actors were those who performed whilst the sun was above the horizon.  The childish trash which now occupies so large a portion of the public attention could not, it is evident, keep possession of the stage, if it were to be presented, not at ten o’clock at night, but twelve hours earlier.  Much would need to be changed in the dresses, scenery, and decorations,