But how can we study Shakspeare so advantageously as in the impersonations of the stage?"
I confess I do not know where the great master can be studied so advantageously as in the best impersonations of the stage, but, nevertheless, I strongly advise that you should stay away from the theatre.
My first objection to the theatre is, that it is never well ventilated. You must breathe, three or four hours, a vitiated atmosphere, which unfits you for the best physical and mental labor during the whole of the next day, perhaps even longer.
My second objection, likewise physiological, is, that it keeps you up till midnight.
My third objection is that which we all make to the yellow-covered literature. While there may be a good thing here and there, the general tone is morbid, not to say impure.
The managers are opening their theatres once or twice a week for a matinee, and, knowing that women and children are likely to constitute a large part of the audience, they present the most decent representations. I advise that, if you attend the theatre at all, you should attend the matinees.
SYMPATHY BETWEEN THE STOMACH AND THE SOUL.
Conceding the extremest views cherished by the Christian believer, in regard to the influence of the Holy Spirit, in the redemption of man's soul, we cannot shut our eyes to the intimate sympathy between the stomach and the moral nature.
The moral sentiments and sympathies are bewildered and lost when the intellect is deranged. No matter though the coronal portion of the brain is grandly developed, if the intellect be insane, or if the digestive function be insane, pure and noble moral impulses are no longer possible. Man is one,—body, mind and heart. These are not three distinct individual partners in a firm, but they are interlinked and interwoven so completely that they are one and not three. My highest conceptions of the Trinitarian idea find illustration in this trinity in man.
The great function of digestion—assimilation—underlies, as a foundation, the intellectual superstructure, while high above all, rising into the very heavens, the moral nature lifts up its sublime heights.