[6] “Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise, that has survived the fall!  Thou art the nurse of virtue—­In thine arms She smiles, appearing, as in truth she is, Heav’n-born, and destin’d to the skies again.  Thou art not known, where pleasure is ador’d, That reeling goddess, with a zoneless waist And wandering eyes, still leaning on the arm Of Novelty, her fickle, frail support; For thou art meek and constant, hating change, And finding, in the calm of truth-tried love, Joys, that her stormy raptures never yield.  Forsaking thee, what shipwreck have we made Of honour, dignity, and fair renown!”

[Footnote 6:  COWPER.]

But if the Quakers have been accustomed to place one of the sources of their pleasures in domestic happiness, they may be supposed to be jealous of every thing that appears to them to be likely to interrupt it.  But they consider dramatic exhibitions, as having this tendency.  These exhibitions, under the influence of plot, dialogue, dress, music, action, and scenery, particularly fascinate.  They excite the person, who has once seen them, to desire them again.  But in proportion as this desire is gratified, or in proportion as people leave their homes for the amusements of the stage, they lose their relish, and weaken their powers, of the enjoyment of domestic society:  that is, the Quakers mean to say, that domestic enjoyments, and those of the theatre, may become, in time, incompatible in the same persons; and that the theatre ought, therefore, to be particularly avoided, as an enemy, that may steal them, and rob them of those pleasures, which experience has taught them to value, as I have observed before, next to the pleasures of religion.

They are of opinion also, that dramatic exhibitions not only tend, of themselves, to make home less agreeable, but that they excite a craving for stimulants, and, above all, teach a dependence upon external objects for amusement.  Hence the attention of people is taken off again to new objects of pleasure, which lie out of their own families, and out of the circle of their friends.

It will not take much time to shew, that the Quakers have not been mistaken in this point.  It is not unusual in fashionable circles, where the theatre is regularly brought into the rounds of pleasure, for the father and the mother of a family to go to a play once, or occasionally twice, a week.  But it seldom happens, that they either go to the same theatre, or that they sit together.  Their children are at this time left at home, under, what is considered to be, proper care, but they are probably never seen again by them till the next noon; and perhaps once afterwards in the same day, when it is more than an even chance, that they must be again left for the gratification of some new pleasure.  Now this separation of fathers from mothers, and of parents from children, does not augur well of domestic enjoyments or of a love of home.