His Views and Principles
subjects make profitable and pleasing spectacles, even though the dramatis personæ are kings and queens whose very existence is doubtful. But I do not think that an attitude such as this can be described as one of hostility to the drama. If you, in a sudden fit of frenzy, were to take off your clothes and propose to walk to Westminster in a state of complete nudity, I do not believe that on coming to your right senses you would characterise my firm but kindly restraint as "hostility"; and, following the analogy, it seems a little hard that Free Churchmen should be held up to public contempt and execration because they object to plays which contain scenes in a duchess's bedroom after midnight, scenes in which champagne is produced, scenes of which the dialogue is far from edifying. Many of us are the fathers of families, of boys and girls whom we are training up with anxious care, whose young lives are precious in our sight. There is nothing more sacred than that ingenuous shame which the growth of civilisation has fostered as a
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