There is much gayety and dissipation and profusion which must escape and disappoint all the arithmetic of political economy.  But the theatres are a prominent feature.  They are established through every part of the kingdom, at a cost unknown till our days.  There is hardly a provincial capital which does not possess, or which does not aspire to possess, a theatre-royal.  Most of them engage for a short time, at a vast price, every actor or actress of name in the metropolis:  a distinction which in the reign of my old friend Garrick was confined to very few.  The dresses, the scenes, the decorations of every kind, I am told, are in a new style of splendor and magnificence:  whether to the advantage of our dramatic taste, upon the whole, I very much doubt.  It is a show and a spectacle, not a play, that is exhibited.  This is undoubtedly in the genuine manner of the Augustan age, but in a manner which was censured by one of the best poets and critics of that or any age:—­

            Migravit ab aure voluptas
    Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana: 
    Quatuor aut plures aulaea premuntur in horas,
    Dum fugiunt equitum turmae, peditumque catervae;—­

I must interrupt the passage, most fervently to deprecate and abominate the sequel:—­

Mox trahitur manibus regum fortuna retortis.

I hope that no French fraternization, which the relations of peace and amity with systematized regicide would assuredly sooner or later draw after them, even if it should overturn our happy Constitution itself, could so change the hearts of Englishmen as to make them delight in representations and processions which have no other merit than that of degrading and insulting the name of royalty.  But good taste, manners, morals, religion, all fly, wherever the principles of Jacobinism enter; and we have no safety against them but in arms.

The proprietors, whether in this they follow or lead what is called the town, to furnish out these gaudy and pompous entertainments, must collect so much more from the public.  It was but just before the breaking out of hostilities, that they levied for themselves the very tax which, at the close of the American war, they represented to Lord North as certain ruin to their affairs to demand for the state.  The example has since been imitated by the managers of our Italian Opera.  Once during the war, if not twice, (I would not willingly misstate anything, but I am not very accurate on these subjects,) they have raised the price of their subscription.  Yet I have never heard that any lasting dissatisfaction has been manifested, or that their houses have been unusually and constantly thin.  On the contrary, all the three theatres have been repeatedly altered, and refitted, and enlarged, to make them capacious of the crowds that nightly flock to them; and one of those huge and lofty piles, which lifts its broad shoulders in gigantic pride, almost emulous of the temples of God, has been reared from the foundation at a charge of more than fourscore thousand pounds, and yet remains a naked, rough, unsightly heap.