alive at the idea. “I really believe,” said he, “I could be fool enough at this moment to undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what should prevent us? Not these countenances, I am sure,” looking towards the Miss Bertrams; “and for a theatre, what signifies a theatre? We shall be only amusing ourselves. Any room in this house might suffice.”

“We must have a curtain,” said Tom Bertram; “a few yards of green baize for a curtain, and perhaps that may be enough.”

“Oh, quite enough,” cried Mr. Yates, “with only just a side wing or two run up, doors in flat, and three or four scenes to be let down; nothing more would be necessary on such a plan as this. For mere amusement among ourselves we should want nothing more.”

“I believe we must be satisfied with less,” said Maria. “There would not be time, and other difficulties would arise. We must rather adopt Mr. Crawford’s views, and make the performance, not thetheatre, our object. Many parts of our best plays are independent of scenery.”

“Nay,” said Edmund, who began to listen with alarm. “Let us do nothing by halves. If we are to act, let it be in a theatre completely fitted up with pit, boxes, and gallery, and let us have a play entire from beginning to end; so as it be a German play, no matter what, with a good tricking, shifting after-piece, and a figure- dance, and a horn-pipe, and a song between the acts. If we do not outdo Ecclesford, we do nothing.”

“Now, Edmund, do not be disagreeable,” said Julia. “Nobody loves a play better than you do, or can have gone much farther to see one.”

“True, to see real acting, good hardened real acting; but I would hardly walk from this room to the next to look at the raw efforts of those who have not been bred to the trade: a set of gentlemen and ladies, who have all the disadvantages of education and decorum to struggle through.”

After a short pause, however, the subject still continued, and was discussed with unabated eagerness, every one’s inclination increasing by the discussion, and a knowledge of the inclination of the rest; and though nothing was settled but that Tom Bertram would prefer a comedy, and his sisters and Henry Crawford a tragedy, and that nothing in the world could be easier than to find a piece which would please them all, the resolution to act something or other seemed so decided as to make Edmund quite uncomfortable. He was determined to prevent it, if possible, though his mother, who equally heard the conversation which passed at table, did not evince the least disapprobation.

The same evening afforded him an opportunity of trying his strength. Maria, Julia, Henry Crawford, and Mr. Yates were in the billiard-room. Tom, returning from them into the drawing-room, where Edmund was standing thoughtfully by the fire, while Lady Bertram was on the sofa at a little distance, and Fanny close beside her arranging her work, thus began as he entered—“Such a horribly vile billiard-table as ours is not to be met with, I believe, above ground. I can stand it no longer, and I think, I may say, that nothing shall ever tempt me to it again; but one good thing I have just ascertained: it is the very room for a theatre, precisely the shape and length for it; and the doors at the farther end, communicating with each other, as they may be made to do in five minutes, by merely moving the bookcase in my father’s room, is the very thing we could have desired, if we had sat down to wish for it; and my father’s room will be an excellent green-room. It seems to join the billiard-room on purpose.”

“You are not serious, Tom, in meaning to act?” said Edmund, in a low voice, as his brother approached the fire.

“Not serious! never more so, I assure you. What is there to surprise you in it?”