1830.] Affairs in General. 451 



" It is hard/' as Mr. Hartland observes, that " after a man has passed 

 the ordeal of a patent theatre/' he should be liable to be conceived guilty 

 of the degradation of shewing his head or heels any where else ; or 

 that after having once enjoyed the dignity of being beaten, broiled, 

 kicked, and thrust into a cannon, at a theatre built of brick, and holding 

 a thousand persons, he should be suspected of humbling himself to an 

 appearance in a theatre of lath and linen, and holding but five hundred. 

 Distinctions are every thing in this world ! 



The Queen, who is a sensible and domestic woman, has very properly 

 commenced her reforms at home, and set the fashions for housemaids 

 through the empire. 



<e Her Majesty had the housemaids before her at Windsor Castle the 

 other day, and said to them, < I wish you to understand that I will have 

 no silk gowns worn here ; and/ the Queen added, f you must wear 

 aprons/ " 



There is both good sense and good feeling in this, for without being 

 of the Leigh Richmond, or the Irving school, nor hating either cheer- 

 fulness or cherry- coloured ribbons among the young rustics, the true 

 female temptation of our day is a taste for finery. Mischievous as it 

 may be among their betters, it is ruin among the lower ranks, and 

 beggary is infinitely the least evil of this propensity. More profligacy 

 has owed its parentage to the love for silks and laces, than to all the 

 other sources of evil put together; and the eagerness for expensive 

 dress, and the vanity of eclipsing their fellow-servants, will, in nine in- 

 stances out of ten, be found to have been the direct cause of the guilt 

 and misery that scandalize the public eye in the streets of London. 



The papers announce MissPaton's engagement at the Haymarket, where 

 we presume she will appear before these observations reach the public, 

 and we can have no wish to disturb her reception. But it is only due to 

 truth to say, that all the declamations of the papers on (f the audience 

 having nothing to do" with the characters of the persons who come 

 before them, must go for nothing. The audience have a vast deal to do 

 with their characters, and it is so much the better for the stage that they 

 should ; for what would be the public respect for a profession in which 

 personal conduct was to be altogether out of view in which the basest 

 treachery, the vilest dishonesty, the most abject infamy was not to lower 

 the character of the individuals ? What would this be but to pronounce 

 the whole profession infamous at once to plunge every well-behaved 

 actor, or virtuous actress, in the same mire of abomination, and make 

 the name of the stage synonymous with vileness ? 



But there is another consideration with what impressions must wives, 

 daughters and sons, look upon a stage in which the objects of such 

 license are before the eye ? Without alluding to the unfortunate case 

 of Miss Paton, let us take any of the instances that may be so easily found, 

 of some actress who has become a public scandal ; whose profligacy has 

 made its way into every newspaper whose crime has been bruited about 

 in every shape of publicity, so that there is scarcely a human being in the 

 country who is not fully acquainted with it. The woman has been 

 acknowledged a notorious profligate, a vile and degraded wretch, seeking 

 the basest lucre by the basest means, a disgust to the sense of public 

 decency, and a disgrace to the name of woman. Is it fitting that such 



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