LAWFULNESS OF EARTHQUAKES.
A GOOD gentleman has taken the trouble to write a letter to the Editor of a Morning Paper, complaining sadly of earthquakes, —that is to say, of earthquakes in theatres *; which he accounts profane imitations, and shocking by reason of the greatness of the Simulated shocks. As earthquakes, however, are not greater efforts to an Almighty Power than the fall of a withered leaf, we cannot recognize the particular force of the alleged objection ; and if it be profane in managers to make earthquakes in theatres, we are sure it is no less wicked in small children to make tempests in basins of water. We often see brats blow gales on walnut-shells in 4 most, audacious manner, and without any thought of the squalls which may whistle the next moment in the Chops of the Channel. Having said thus much, we are bound in fairness to quote the substance of the good gentleman's argument :- " I admit that the scourges of war, conflagration, and other calamities, in which human agency has an instrumental operation, have long been presented to the public eye without offence ; but the peculiar character of a devastation so entirely independent of the physical agency of man (whatever may be thought of the influence of his moral conduct), has, I believe, hitherto entirely prevented such an evil as an earthquake from being deemed a legitimate source of public entertainment, while the en- tire uncertainty of exemption from such an evil, ander which every na- tion (not even excepting our own) is always more or less placed, invests any attempt at mimicry and stage effect with such a manifest impropriety, as might be thought calculated to prevent the introduction, at least in such a place as a playhouse, of so awful an exhibition of the power and majesty of the Almighty, working indeed by secondary means, but not less working on that account. If it should he said, that other imitations of terrific appearances are tolerated at the theatre,—such, for instance, as of thunder and lightning, inundation, or tempest,—and therefore that this may be endured as well as others, I apprehend that (without intend- ing to justify those imitations) no comparison can be properly instituted between the comparatively innocuous consequences of such minor inter- ruptions of the course of nature, and the awful and tremendous visitation to which I refer ; and that it appears upon the whole, that for creatures so insignificant and unworthy as ourselves to trifle with the most appal- ling convulsions of the material world, and to find our amusement in de- solation itself, is hardly to be justified upon any principle, and affords a melancholy proof of the obduracy of the human heart, and the levity with which it can contemplate such appalling events as have befallen our fel- low-creatures, while we ourselves may possibly be the next victims of a similar calamity."
Tempests are thus allowable imitations, because tempests are comparatively with earthquakes innocuous. We beg leave to dispute the position ; and to submit,that more men perish by the fury of the winds in any one year, than in earthquakes in any chosen dozen. Earthquakes disagree most with houses and crockery ; they ding down cathedrals, and break saucers ; they make people stagger like topers, and they ring church And chamber bells. Tempests, on the other hand, disagree most with ships and men ; they founder first-rates, and drown crews by tens, hundreds, and thou- sands. This they do at sea ; and ashore, in some parts, they take great guns up an airing, and fan along a plantation of sedentary habits, roots and all, at the rate of a hundred miles an hour! What they do here in England, where " we live at home in ease," is also very shocking : they show the ladies' legs in walking, with as much freedom as the managers of theatres ; and they blow off men's hats, particularly if the parties are bald., to expose them ; and they play at skittles with chimney-tops. Now, in the inventory of disaster, we are bold to sayth at the tempests have most damage to answer for; therefore, according to our worthy objecter, it is most blameable to make wind in theatres, and not motions of the earth. Were we asked what was the greatest pest the earth was vexed with, we should answer, with our customary exactness, neither tempests nor earthquakes, but the earth-quacks who everlastingly weary us with their cackle about this nonsense or that, and call the stars out of the firmament to witness the holes they are inces- santly picking in our moral coats.
The good gentleman who disapproves of earthquakes unless genuine, gives us one guess at his quality, in the conclusion of his - epistle ; where he quotes Hamlet for the detached and incomplete text, " guilty creatures sitting at a play,"—by which it is meant to be implied, that, according to SHAKSPEARE, all creatures sitting at a play are creatures guilty by position, just as vowels in Latin prosody are long or short by the same rule. We thence opine that our friend aids plays sinful, whether they quake or not. We, who are precisely what we ought to be, having no preju- dices, and a latitude of liberality 3600 in compass, and belting in the two poles and whole surface of the globe with its span—we being such, nevertheless do think and 'confess, that liberties are taken with sacred things in theatres which are inconsistent with the re- verence to be expected from a people professing religion ; but they are not the imitations of storms or earthquakes, or any other phenomena of nature ; they are the mimicries of devotion, and the use of the name of the Deity for purposes of stage-effect. Is it seemly in a melo-drama, to behold, as is often done, a man with a painted face, and white wig on his head, walk to the foot-lights, drop on his knees, look up to the butchers'-boys in the one-shilling- gallery, and go through all the motions of addressing the Supreme Being to the solemn music of the fiddles in the orchestra? Let us not quarrel with earthquakes, till this, as it were, personal liberty is reformed.
* In reference to a piece at present running its course at the Adelphi.
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