Date: 1885
Moreover, enthusiasm is catching, and the sympathetic impulse of numbers assists the dull and slow perceptions of the many to perceive what they ought to feel by following the lead of the quicker intel ligences : emotion gains like fire.  And to allow such a powerful engine of instruction to be wasted as we do, because it is often abused, is the more strange a mistake, as acting of some kind is quite certain to go on in this and every other country in the world to the end of the chapter.  The influence of the Puritans set a seal of wickedness on the stage in England, which has tended to demoralise it, as the ban of the Roman Catholic Church on actors has done to the profession abroad.