CHAPTER VI.

DUBLIN AND EDINBURGH.

Irishmen have a natural theatrical instinct, and Dublin, at the time of which we write, was to a certain degree valued as a censor in dramatic affairs as highly as London. A Dublin audience often ventured to dissent from the judgments of the metropolis, and, as in the case of Mrs. Pritchard, who, Campbell quaintly tells us, "electrified the Irish with disappointment," to entirely reverse them. Most of the best Drury Lane players had begun their career at the Smock Alley theatre, and many of them had Irish blood in their veins. The theatre was the finest in the kingdom next to Drury Lane, boasting the innovation of a drop scene, representing the Houses of Parliament, instead of the conventional green curtain.

The same causes which placed the provincial towns of England in an important position, so far as social and dramatic affairs were concerned, operated still more effectually in the case of Dublin. To cross to London in those days was as long and tedious a journey as to go to New York in ours; and none even of the nobility thought of doing so every year. The