ABSTRACT
In a previous discussion upon the need of reformation on the ~tage, the Bishop of Manchester dwelt upon the influence that women might have if they were more courageous to exert it in reforming society. "He had told a lady who had written to him on the subject of an objectionable ballet at a pantomine, that if she would only influence her friends, and persuade them to influence an whom they could influence to stay away from the pantomine for one single week, he thought that the evil would be cured. The women could do a great deal of the work needed. If mothers would not allow in their homes anyone, however desirable in point of fortune, as matches for their daughters, whom they knew to be men of corrupt lives; if young women would not allow fast and fashionable men to say to them things they would hardly dare to say to a woman of the town; if they would surround themselves with the fence with which modesty could always surround itself, a powerful influence, almost immeasurable in its consequences, might be brought to bear upon the elevation of society; and he did not think the theatre would ever be purified till society was elevated."
