text:  What a blessing it is for a nation to be in possession of so useful an institution where the actual manners of the time are brought exactly forward and the people can see the different classes of society with all their different feelings and peculiarities--their modes of thought--their faults and weaknesses--their wishes and vices--as vividly produced as if the performers were in reality the very beings they represent! How it must instruct the boorish in the gracefulness of polished life--how it must reprove the bad by the contemplation of honest simplicity--and what an insight must it give to the foreigners into all the secrets of the domestic existence of this great and extraordinary people! O Cho-Ling-Kyang! when the young person told me this I said to my heart--"Be still--beat no more with the pulses of uncertainty--I shall only buy a perpetual ticket to the pit of the theatre and write home a minute account of all I see and hear