tificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquo be exploded and put doantly. times cannot bear t for a feogetic cers  stand test. e screo t. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, t of an evening, startles us in tions of profligacy in a son or le a parent or guardian. e ions as dramatic interests left. e see a stage libertine playing er consequence,  real vices ators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life to t of strict morality) and take it all for trutitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge ry s, from is personae!,  sentimental comedy but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures , t is every tead of titious age (toms of old comedy) s, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, -- terest in antial, t  afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to compromise or slumber for a moment.  is transacting, by no modification is made to affect us in any ots or cers ionso tre  go tors, to escape from ty, so muco confirm our experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of fate. e must live our toilsome lives t o descend to t neutral ground of cer, ue; or  to neition; t ual moral questioning -- tuary and quiet Alsatia of ed casuistry -- is broken up and disfranco terests of society. taken a dally  sion from tation of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our anxiety t our morality s take cold,  up in a great blanket surtout of precaution against the breeze and sunshine.

    I confess for m