AMATEUR HISTRIONICS.

We learn that an appetite for private theatricals is beginning to manifest itself among the rising generation of Western Canada. Such a development cannot be too deeply deplored, or too emphatically protested against.

Universal experience demonstrates that the amateur stage is one of the most patent and direct roads to ruin with which this world is cursed. The police annals of London (and we doubt not of most large cities,) swarm with proofs to this effect. The man who denies the truth of our assertion can have paid very little attention to the dismal statistics of Bow street and the Old Bailey. Of the ill-fated culprits, who yearly appear before these tribunals, belonging to such classes as clerks or shop

keeper's assistants, a very large proportion date their downfall to a craving appetite for the sock and buskin.

Nor is it strange that such should be the case, when we come steadily to look into the tastes and habits induced by such a pursuit.

The aspirant after histrionic distinction, is necessarily thrown into the society of the idle and dissipated. The getters up of a spouting club are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, worthless, unsettled vagabonds; the rolling stones of social life, who never gather the moss of respectability and competence. Every community of any extent can furnish specimens of the creature to whom we have reference. He may be recognized by his headmark. You can tell him by the lounging style in which he shuffles along the leading streets, his face deformed by patches of filthy hair, and his garments cut after a rakish pattern. In bar-rooms and free and easy clubs, he is the cock of the walk, and is looked up to as a pregnant authority in all matters connected with the minor stage. He has by heart a list of every farce and melo-drama produced within the last five years, and can tell you all the petty current on dits touching the third and fourth rate actors of the day.

It can easily be conceived that the intimate association with such a worthy would have a most pestilent ten

dency to unsettle the habits of any raw, thoughtless young man. The poor lad, probably fresh from the country, is insensibly led to look up to the loafer as a species of Sir Oracle and to ape his characteristics. He comes to regard the stage as the most enviable arena where renown is to be gained, and consequently to view the shop or the counting house in the most unappetizing light. Instead of studying the details of his trade or profession, his mind is continually absorbed by vague longings after the tinsel laurels of the stage; and the desire to realize a decent competence is superseded by a hankering after the puff paste gems, and the timber gilt diadem of the mimic monarch.

And when (generally as a great favor, purchased with loans never to be repaid,) he is enrolled as a member of the much longed for corps dramatic, the demoralizing process progresses with railroad speed. In place of occupying his spare time with solid and instructive reading, the miserable simpleton is engaged committing to memory the turgid trash for the part of which he has been cast. Not only are the most precious moments of his life thus frittered unprofitably away, but his mind is stored with a confused mass of literary rubbish made up of spurious sentiment, and of the lowest ribaldry. He becomes opulent in slang phrases and high-sounding

platitudes, calculated to bring down a clap from admiring galleries, and gain the affections of feather-headed chamber-maids and milliners.

As a necessary result of his miserable training, the hapless youth becomes unfit for really useful and laudable pursuits. Almost never will you detect the name of such a one in the list of a mechanic institute's committee. Far more seldom is it to be met with in the noble bead-roll of Sunday school teachers. We speak from personal and wide-extending experience when we make these assertions. Exceptions may be found, but they only go to prove the rule.

Then again, every public performance involves a series of preliminary rehearsals, and of these a majority take place in some Thespian house-of-call. Of course decency demands that something must be done for the good of the landlord, and, moreover, every one knows that declamation is a thirst-provoking work! The cobwebs require to be washed down! Besides, many of the magnets of the stage loved their glass! Old Kean discussed his quart of neat brandy during the progress of a five act tragedy; and George Frederick Cook required to be half-seas-over before he could top his part ! These are high authorities to the budding Roscius, and conse

quently he does as the "star" did, and becomes erudite in the concoction of slings, horns, and cocktails!

Need we say how naturally all these antecedents lead to dishonesty and peculation? The poor witling contracts habits which require more money for their gratification than he can legitimately command. Fatally opportune is the desk or till of his employer, and-but we need not repeat a tale unhappily too common!

Wind we up with a little incident which came under our own ken.

One of our fellow students in the University of was a young man of more than average abilities. For the first session or two, John Primrose (as we shall call him) attracted attention by the skill which he displayed in performing the prescribed exercises of his classes, and even succeeded in carrying off more than one premium. John's parents, who, though respectable, were very poor, had pinched themselves, as Scottish parents frequently do, to give him a college education; and they looked forward with hopeful pleasure to the time when, at the bar, or in the pulpit, their beloved boy would "gild their humble name," and gladden with competence their pathway to the tomb. Often have we met the old man in his son's humble lodging, when he brought from the country a supply of fresh eggs or butter for the student,