But good plays are needed as much as good actors; and good plays we shall never have so long as managers can procure gratis the latest London success, which London itself has generally derived from a French source. Managers are cautious of new playwrights, and wisely so. But this caution may be, is carried a little too far. We have a society of our own, and a history of our own. We have already a host of clever and even brilliant writers. We have had a great war and a great convulsion. We have plenty to attack, and plenty to uphold. Our society, political, social, and religious, is scarcely what it might be. There is many a foul thing to sweep away; there is a meeting of many elements in this land of ours; there is a history to look back upon, and a glorious history to build up, if we build rightly. At the same time, there is a licentiousness, outspoken, scornful, and gaining ground day by day, which it is our duty to withstand by every force in our power. There is that aping, too, of the worst imported fashions, that running after wealth and rank, when they come among us, that betokens a wandering from the sturdy ways of our fathers. There is a widespread corruption in the administration of the law, a venality in political life, which it would be well to crush. There is here field enough for the native dramatist, without looking abroad for the “cheap and nasty.” Could a Sheridan rise up among us now, he would find no lack of subjects for his pen in the extravagance, the contradictions, the licentiousness of this age and this great Republic. At all events, if we must import, let us import the best, and not things which poison our life, and stop our intellectual and natural as well as our moral growth, and make us a laughing-stock to the outer world.
HOW I LEARNED LATIN.
When I was young, I travelled a good deal, but travel then was very different from what it is now. My travelling was all obligatory, it was on business, and I sometimes found myself detained in places from which I would gladly have taken a quick departure. It happened once that, during my tour through France, I had to stay a Sunday at Lyons. The stages on Saturday were few, and did not suit me, and of course it was against my principles to travel on the “Sabbath.” I had been brought up a very strict Presbyterian, and was very particular, especially in a foreign country, about attending service. I could hardly speak any French, which perhaps you will think strange, since I had business to transact in France, but my business was with English and American houses and their agents. You know, too, in my time young people did not learn French as they do now, any more than young ladies learned to play on the piano. But I was determined I would go to church, and so set about finding out whether there was any English-speaking clergyman in Lyons. I could not find any, and, when I inquired after a church, I was deafened and confused by the number of St. Marys’, St. Monicas’, St. Vincents’, St. Josephs’, that were pointed out to me. If it had not been the “Sabbath,” I think I should have been tempted to swear at the whole calendar and its Lyons representatives. I asked for a Protestant church. “Oh! yes,” said one (all the others looked blank), “there is a ‘temple’ (so they call them in France) in such and such a street,” naming it, and giving me directions by which I could not fail to discover it. I started, fearing I should be late. I had heard that the French Protestant religion was not unlike the Presbyterian, but I had never been to one of its churches before, having always been luckily within reach of some church where my own tongue was used. At last I found my “temple,” and got in, rather behind time, to be sure. The people were singing. The church—meeting-house, I should say—was bare and whitewashed, large square windows lighted it with a painful exuberance of brightness, the seats were stiff and uncomfortable. I could not understand one word, and thought the voices rather nasal. The congregation sat down and the minister got up. This evidently meant a sermon. I tried hard to fix my mind on some Bible texts I knew by heart, so as to prevent my thoughts from wandering. As the preacher went on, his voice droning into my ear, I caught myself wondering whether I were in the right place after all, and whether his doctrine was the same as mine. I could not tell what he might be saying, but, of course, the hymns must be all right. I took up a hymn-book, and tried to make out from their analogy to some English words what these French words could mean. I could see the name of “Jesus” pretty often, and could make out “Saviour” too, but that was about all. The sermon was very long, and I was hardly quite awake at the end. Then the people sang again, and a harmonium joined in from somewhere. When it was all over, I felt very dissatisfied, and somehow it did not seem to me as if I had been to church at all. I lost my way going back to my hotel, and happened to pass one of the “saints’” multitudinous shrines, just as the Catholic congregation were coming out. An acquaintance of mine, a young Englishman, was among them. He came across the street and shook hands.
“Why, where have you dropped from?” he said.
“From church,” I answered.
“What church?” he asked, rather blankly.
“The Protestant ‘temple,’ of whatever religion that may be,” I said, not in the best of humors. I told him my whole adventure, whereat he seemed very serious.
“My dear fellow,” he said at last, “have you not often heard us Catholics abused for all sorts of mummeries, for muttering and mumbling in an unknown tongue, for bowing and scraping, and popping down, suddenly on one knee, and so forth?”