Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/164

 remarkable trust the State was able to reserve the vast centre of the ground floor, which eventually became, as was foreseen and intended, the active focus of the commerce and finance, alike of capital and provinces, and indeed of the whole commercial world; and whose rentals, estimated by the square inch of such almost priceless space, yielded a magnificent and ever-increasing endowment for science.

A general feeling prevailed about this time that the drama had not had due justice amongst us, and that in some way of public support something effective should be done in order to give it the high and prominent place which it should hold as being really by far the most effective agent, alike for the instruction, the indispensable recreation, and the mere pastime amusement of the people. The State, therefore, decided to intervene, and to do all that seemed necessary for the cause by means and pecuniary aid of a special trust. Nothing was spared towards having everything of the best and most suitable, from the noble material edifice which duly arose in the new cause, to all those social and moral considerations and arrangements which were to insure the desired respectability of the entire dramatic connection. Towards this important step of dramatic progress there had been some previous successful effort, chiefly in the establishment of schools for dramatic education, and thus great numbers of both sexes had taken