CHAPTER LXI. A DISSERTATION ON THE OPERA. 'Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm, I have seen the day That I have worn a visor, and could tell 66 SHAKSPEARE. "FOR once or twice, or, perhaps, half a dozen times in a season," said Evelyn, I should not much mind, perhaps I should like it; but to have a box for the whole winter, and never miss a night, I own it is too much for the virtue of any man or any woman." "And yet you own you once were a votary," remarked Tremaine. "I confess it," said Evelyn, "a votary to all that could sooth, dazzle, or exhilarate, in sound or sight; to all the attractions of soul-subduing elegance; in short, to all that art or luxury could devise, by which, after laying reason asleep, it could enchant, overpower, and, I fear, corrupt the mind." 66 Corrupt the mind!" exclaimed Tremaine. "Is it possible the Opera can so offend?” "Not if moderately taken. It is then only a very splendid fête, exciting much emotion, 'tis true, but not so much as may not be soon allayed. But if repeated so as to become a nightly want, all other (particularly the more rational) gratifications fall down before, and are absorbed by it; and whatever becomes of the virtue of your philosophers of fashion, I should tremble for mine." "I am to understand then," said Tremaine, laughing, "that men of fashion have more power to resist temptation than you country clergymen.' "Rather that you are like the devils," answered Evelyn, "and are condemned to live in flames, which do not torture the less, because they are not annihilated." "Who would have thought that you were so easily undermined?" asked Tremaine. "I am so,” replied Evelyn: "and the misery is that the Opera devotee, whether male or female, goes on, night after night, undermining and relaxing all the springs of virtuous or religious energy, without being conscious of the danger; and a character may be unsettled, or a soul lost, before anything is known but the effect." 66 Perhaps that is the reason," rejoined Tremaine, "why the bishops never favour us with their presence." "And a very good one, if it is," answered Evelyn. "You will observe, however, I speak only of your thorough-paced Opera goer." 66 "What an epithet for a lover of the most elegant, the most fascinating of all amusements!" said Tremaine. “It is that fascination, carried as it is to excess, with which I quarrel," replied his friend. No, Sir, no: the Opera, to the senses, when daily taken, is like opium to the body-we are drunk without knowing it: nothing else will please, and yet it destroys. The stage is so set off with magnificence, that nothing simple afterwards can interest. Music seems to revel, as if Timotheus, or Apollo himself, directed. It takes the prison'd soul, and laps it in Elysium.' How can I, when nightly full of it, set about my devotions, or mere ordinary business, with common content?" "I wonder you don't mention the dancing," said Tremaine. "The worst of all," answered the moralist, "for here the utmost effort of art and ingenuity, under the most graceful, and therefore unsuspicious appearance, seems to be lavished on the poor tempted senses. Voluptuousness applies to them in every form, every motion, every sound; and it depends merely upon the scope of the fable, or design of the ballet, what he may be for the rest of the night, and perhaps the next day." "Are our principles then so weak?" asked Tremaine. "Our principles, if we have any," said Evelyn, "seem to be left with our money at the door : for the very air of the enchanted palace is infectious." "The company at least are much obliged to you,” retorted Tremaine. "The company is as bad as any part of it," answered Evelyn. "This is most extraordinary!" "Not in the least. Pleasure, in its most gilded shape, pleasure without reflection, is the object of all. Dress, manners, conversation, ideas, are all shaped and directed according to its dictates. The natural character of every one seems to partake of what is going forward on the stage. Elegant voluptuousness takes possession; voluptuousness not thought dangerous, because so elegant. Hence, affectation, flirtation, and assignation; hence, the acting, both off and on the stage; hence, the ruin of many a young mind, put out of humour with its every-day duties. In short, in the boxes, as well as on the boards, Circe, Comus, and Calypso seem to keep their court, and the enchanter actually for a time makes good the promise of his cup (more precious than nepenthe), that it will Bathe the drooping senses in delight, "This is very eloquent," said Tremaine, turning to Georgina, who listened the whole time with marked attention : "but I perceive you only wish to set this fair lady upon her guard, or perhaps, like a good rhetorician, merely try an experiment as to your powers for or against a question." "I assure you," said Evelyn, gravely, "I only speak my thoughts, which arose long ago out of severe examinations which I was forced to hold with myself on the subject." "You found yourself undermined," observed Tremaine. "Not so much undermined, as unfitted, by taking too much of it, for the more sober and important pursuits of life. You will observe I still confine myself to the case of its becoming an habitual want, as it did with me, and as it does with most. In that case, it is like gaming, which swallows up both passion and principle; and the gardens of Armida were not more enervating to the heroism of Rinaldo, than the Opera-house to the virtue and devotion of a christian." "Did ever any man alive, before this," exclaimed Tremaine, "attempt to mix virtue and christian devotion with the Opera ?" Georgina laughed, and he continued: "Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay; hence I suppose a lady never wants an excuse for a smile; otherwise I would ask my fair friend what prompted her mirth ?" "To see how we may sometimes be misapprehended," answered she; for it was because virtue and devotion could never mix with an Opera, that my father mentioned them." "The lady understands me, as she always does," pursued Evelyn, half embracing her as he said it. Tremaine envied that half embrace. 66 "that Seriously, can you wonder," added Evelyn, not merely a clergyman, but any man not absolutely debauched by the world, or indifferent to what is to come, should lament the sort of corruption, that, 'mining all within,' under the name of pleasure, infects unseen!'' * The Doctor seems to have lived so long in the country as really to have grown a little rusty; for his feelings and his fears are those of a raw young man, educated by his grandmother, and seeing an opera during his first winter in London.-ED. i "I deny both the corruption and the infection," answered Tremaine, "and never found the elegance you complain of do other than refine my taste, or soften my heart to all about me." 66 "To the singers and dancers I have no doubt it did," replied Evelyn, as it did mine when a young man ; and what young man is not liable to be softened by an Opera girl? But will you tell me if it ever excited one virtuous emotion, one that was not even in some degree of a different complexion? If it were only from the circumstance of the best Opera being always on the Saturday, the eve of the sabbath, I should quarrel with it." "That is a sophistry I did not expect from so large a mind,” said Tremaine," for with so much true religion as such a teacher of it must have, what difference, in point of effect, can mere conventional forms produce? "Do you call, then, the sabbath a form?" said Evelyn, seriously. "To a man sincerely and deeply imbued with the reality, as you are, I do," answered Tremaine. "I did not know that had been your creed," said Evelyn, gravely; and Georgina perceiving her wished-for opportunity was already come, listened with all the eagerness of fixed attention. 66 My good friend," observed Tremaine, “creeds are at all times, in my opinion, but bad things, since they only fetter the liberal mind, and produce misunderstandings by introducing points of controversy, which in time become points of honour, and are unceasing causes of strife. I say my prayers in the fields; you in a church; yet we both pray to the same deity. I am most fervent in one week on a Saturday, in another on a Friday, you always on a Sunday: which is likely to be most spontaneous, and therefore most serious in devotion, you, whose call is periodical, and the effect of mere institution —or I, who listen alone to the immediate impulse of the heart?" "There is no irreligion in this," thought Georgina. |