Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene, and the theatre became to him, "upon a new stock, the most delightful of recreations." Audiences have always been miscellaneous.

Among them not only youth and age, but rich and poor, wise and ignorant, good and bad, virtuous and vicious, have alike found representation.

The gallery and the groundlings have been catered for not less than the spectators of the boxes and private rooms; yet, upon the whole, the stage, from its earliest period, has always provided entertainment of a reputable and wholesome kind.

Even in its least commendable condition--and this, so far as England is concerned, we may judge to have been during the reign of King Charles II .-- it yet possessed redeeming elements.

It was never wholly bad, though it might now and then come very near to seeming so.