produced a correspondent effect. The Port Folio alone raised, long ago, a spirit in the country which malicious Dulness itself will never be able to lay. Yet the disproportion in number of those miscellanies which have succeeded in America, to those which enrich the republic of letters in England, is astonishing, considering the comparative population of the two countries. London boasts of several periodical publications founded on the DRAMA alone; and though the other magazines occasionally contain short strictures on that subject, those have the greatest circulation which are most exclusively devoted to the stage.

In America there has not yet been one of that description.

To supply this defect, and raise the United States one step higher in laudable emulation with Great Britain, the editors have planned the present work, of which, (though not to the total exclusion of other matter) the basis will be

THE DRAMA.

The first and by far the larger share will be allotted to the stage, and dramatic productions. The residue to miscellaneous articles, most of them connected with the fashionable amusements, and designed to correct the abuses, which intemperate ignorance, and Licentiousness, running riot for want of critical control, have introduced into the public diversions of this opulent and luxurious city.

In the composition of the several parts of this work, care will be taken to furnish the public with new and interesting matter, and to select from the current productions of the British metropolis such topics as will best tend to promote the cultivation of an elegant taste for knowledge and letters, and, at the same time, repay the reader for the trouble of perusal, with amusement and delight. Abstracts from the most popular publications will be given, accompanied with short critical remarks upon them, and, whatever appears most interesting in the periodical productions of Great Britain will be transferred into this; pruned if they be prolix, and illustrated by explanatory notes, whenever they may be found obscured by local or personal allusion.

As the leading object of the work is, not to infuse a passion, but to inculcate a just and sober taste for dramatic poetry and acting, the editors propose to give, seriatim, a history of the drama from its origin, with strictures on dramatic poesy, and portraits of the best dramatic poets of antiquity. To this will succeed the history of the British stage, with portraits of the most celebrated poets, authors, and actors who have flourished on it, and strictures on the professional talents of the latter, illustrated by parallels and comparisons with those who have been most noted for excellence on the American boards.

From that history the reader will be able to deduce a proper conviction of the advantages of the stage, and the importance, if not the necessity, of putting the actors and the audience on a more proper footing with each other than that in which they now stand. Actors must lay their account with being told their faults. They owe their whole industry and attention to those who attend their performance; but the editors hold that critic to have forfeited his right to correct the stage, and to be much more deserving of reprehension than those he censures, who, in the discharge of his duty, forgets that the actor has his rights and privileges also; that he has the same rights which every other gentleman possesses, and of which his profession has not even the remotest tendency to deprive him, to be treated with politeness and respect; that he has the same right as every other man in society, as the merchant, the mechanic, or the farmer, to prosecute his business unmolested; shielded by the same laws which protect them from the attacks