It struck pleasantly on many ears when lately we heard that the great ideas of Brotherhood, Equality, and relgious responsibility in Uncle Tom's Cabin were preached to the Bowery boys from the stage. It was the more pleasant when we were assured that the mass of the audience were such as could by no inducement be beguiled into a church or religious meeting; that they were the proletaires of a great City—the wandering, marauding boy, the professional rowdy, the "flash man," and even the outcast Pariah of our society—the prostitute.

  Whatever difference of opinion might be as to the correctness of the facts stated in that work, it was good to know that such an audience, with tearful eyes and enthusiastic cheers, acknowledged the grand sentiments of humanity contained in it; that the homeless boy wept to hear from Eva of her love for the poor black child, "just because she had no father, or mother, or home"; that solemn thoughts of responsibility, and even triumphant words of religious Faith, could be uttered in the Bowery, not merely without travesty and parody, but in the tones of the most appropriate feeling, to an audience still in earnest attention. It was a sermon which none of us had expected in that quarter.

  Since that time the character of the audience has changed, but the extraordinary success of the play, now near its hundredth night to crowded houses, calls for many reflections. For the first time, with one or two indifferent exceptions, in the history of our stage, piety and morality are found to pay in the shows of the theatre. The event may mark a new era in dramatic representation in this country. It demands, at any rate, a thoughtful consideration from every benevolent and religious man; and we propose to offer a few suggestions, to throw light upon it.

  There are two facts to be considered in this question of Theatrical Exhibitions, on quite different sides. One is, that in all human probability, through all possible circumstances in the future, people will go to Theatres; the other, that in all countries, under all cultures and in all ages of the past, the influence of Theatres has been bad. The correct conclusion must be reached in some way, under the light of both. We would say, in the first place, without hesitation, that, to the intellectual man, there is no higher mental pleasure than that from the best dramatic representation. There is nothing approaching it. Even the pleasures of Music and Art are poor beside it. To hear the thought and passion of a great master of the human heart, uttered with the living tone and voice of one penetrated with both; to watch the changing feeling, the pathos and humor, the light and shadow of a play, as of a human life; to be aided in the illusion by appropriate scenery, and to feel the great artistic moral lesson, which every true drama gives—there is nothing so suggestive and so full of pleasing association to the mind.

  The valor, the nobleness, the heroic love, which only beautify a few scattered moments in life, are prolonged and vivified for us, on the stage. The Past, too, furnishes its splendid figures, and for a little while we forget the present, in the solemn lessons of royal ambition, or princely pride and revenge, derived from the historic drama. It may be, at its best, poor. It is poor before our ideals. Still, the passing picture of human life, the strut, the vanity, the love, and the sorrow, are intensely interesting, even when given by common-place men, and under threadbare scenery. It can be equally the means of conveying the highest lessons. The most complete efforts of human genius in the best language of the Past have been dramatic. The most subtle and acute criticism in modern days has been formed by the study of the drama; and in respect to historic knowledge, we may say that among the common people of England and Germany, more is known of the early history of their countries from the plays of SCHILLER and SHAKESPEARE, than from any other source. Nothing can better show the power of the drama as a popular influence, than the bills of Continental Theatres at the present time, when the advertisement of Don Carlos or Julius Caesar would call out the severest police-requisition which the Governments could apply.

  If this is true of the higher classes, of those of us who have books and pictures, and concerts and lectures, how much more true must it be of such an audience as listened with fixed attention to the first presenting of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," in the "National Theatre." Men, women, boys, who either do not or cannot read; who never hear a lecture or enter a church; who know nothing of history or foreign countries or the upper classes, except as they catch delighted glimpses of them on the boards of a Theatre, in a play, for a little while, can forget the dull, disagreeable home in cellar or attic, the drudging and hard-pressed life, the round of degrading pleasure—yes, even the hell of pollution; and human nature, if only in imagined scenes, reassert its higher instincts.

  What wonder that the masses, the rabble, the off-scouring and proletaires of a city, are always the best attendants on the Theatre? And still more, what wonder that in the lowest Theatre of the city, and before the lowest audience, the sentiments most quickly received and most enthusiastically responded to, are the generous and manly sentiments. With all this, taking man's nature and circumstances, it is evident a great multitude will always attend the Theatre. And abstractly considered, who can object? What is there in the picturing of love and hate, of sorrow and mirth, of the round of human fortunes, by the living voice and under stage-scenery, more injurious than its presentation in the novel or the poem? Why should the play acted be stigmatized as poisonous, when the play read is the most popular reading in the most moral circles? Viewed by itself, it is evident that no objection can be made to the Drama. The correct answer to these questions, however, brings up the other view of the subject. First, we are forced to say, that under all dramas of all countries, under the plays of AESCHYLUS, or TERENCE, or MOLIERE, or SHAKESPEARE, the members of the play-company have been, not all, but as a body, and with exceptions, immoral men and immoral women, and the appointments to the Theatre debasing to manhood and to virtue. Second—The Theatres in this country, through want of legitimate income, have connected with them everything which is the most corrupting and the most attractive to young men of weak principles. Where the play would not bring a full house, the grog shop and the prostitutetier are made to do it. Thirdly—The plays, till now in vogue and most famed, are redolent of the coarse thought and vulgar expression, peculiar to an age whose politest conversation would now hardly be tolerated by mixed circles of men and women in our lowest taverns.

  That all these objections are capable of being obviated, we are not certain. Still, we have hopes. Because a thing has always been abused in past time, does not, in the improved sense of the world, prove that it always will be.

  There was a time when to be an author was almost synonymous with being a spendthrift. Why may not the play-actor equally lose his old reputation? Certainly, among the singers on the stage, of late years, we have had some noble instances of pure and distinterested characters.

  Conversation, novels, Art, have all been purified—why should not the Drama?

  All the corrupting attendants on a Theatre will be changed if something more is found more profitable. If a play pays better in a house without rum-shop and third tier, the change will be made as inevitably as American nature tends towards anything which is a good investment. Drunkenness and lechery will be resisted by the laws of profit,—and then what chance have they?

  We incline to believe—though we dare not affirm—that such a period has come, when the drama can be made a means of moral influence. We hope, at least, that a trial will be made, and that good men will give it a fair field and a candid consideration. Mr. HOWARD has made a tale of oppression, of faith under suffering, of religious heroism, a paying piece. Let him now try another of a different kind. Let the evils of the North be represented,—quite as terrible and heaven-defying as in the other quarters of the Union,—let him employ some man of genius and of true religious feeling, to draw a moral from the dark fortunes of the lower classes in our City. No tragedy of SOPHOCLES or SHAKESPEARE had ever half the strange and solemn incidents which one day's experience in the Five Points or Water-street will give. Let the dramatist draw the struggle and the temptation of the sewing-woman of New-York, the dreary loneliness, the crushed aspirations, the ever-nearing starvation; and then the moment's gleam of pleasure, followed by the broken spirit, the world's scorn, the outcast's death. Or, in another form, the heroism which, under penury and starvation, can hold the woman true to virtue and religion.

  Let the hard path of the poor boy,—his sufferings, his work, his hopes and discontents, his temptations and success,—be portrayed; let all the freest and most humane ideas, all the sentiments which agitate every stratum of society, be represented in such a play, and, through them all, the spirit of the most genial Religion, and we will see whether it will be too dull for the mob, or too dangerous for the pure and moral.

  With such a play—and the materials abound for it here—we believe a new era would begin with the Drama, and an agent which has thus far been most powerful for evil, be turned to one of the mightiest means for the elevation of man.