Page:Thoughts on the Education of Daughters.djvu/161

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The Theatre.
151

poſed to public view. Until very lately I never had the courage even to look at a perſon dying on the ſtage. The hour of death is not the time for the diſplay of paſſions; nor do I think it natural it ſhould: the mind is then dreadfully diſturbed, and the trifling ſorrows of this world not thought of. The deaths on the ſtage, in ſpite of the boaſted ſenſibility of the age, ſeem to have much the ſame effect on a polite audience, as the execution of malefactors has on the mob that follow them to Tyburn.

The worſt ſpecies of immorality is inculcated, and life (which is to determine the fate of eternity) thrown away when

a king-