The drama is part of the great effort of mankind for the representation of human character, passion, and event. Other sister arts--History, the Historical Romance, the Epic poem--also aim in some degree, by different methods, at the same object; and it is by considering their different principles, and necessary limitations, that the real rules of the drama will best be understood. HISTORY, as all the world knows, embraces the widest range of human events. Confined to no time, restricted to no locality, it professes, in a comparatively short space, to portray the most extensive and important of human transactions. Centuries, even thousands of years, are sometimes, by its greatest masters, embraced within its mighty arms. The majestic series of Roman victories may occupy the genius of one writer: the fifteen centuries of its decline and fall be spanned by the powers of another. The vast annals of Mahommetan conquest, the long sway of the Papal dominion, present yet untrodden fields to future historical effort.[5] But it is this very greatness and magnitude of his subject which presents the chief difficulty with which the historian has to contend. With the exception of a very few instances, such lengthened annals are necessarily occupied by a vast variety of characters, actions, states, and events, having little or no connexion with each other, scarce any common object of union, and no thread by which the interest of the reader is to be kept up throughout. Hence it is that works of history are so generally complained of as dull: that, though they are more numerous than any other class of literary compositions, the numbers of those generally read is so extremely small. Enter any public library, you will see hundreds of historical works reposing in respectable dignity on the shelves. How many of them are generally studied, or have taken hold by common consent on the minds of men? Not ten. Romance numbers its readers by hundreds, Poetry by fifties, where History can with difficulty muster one. This amazing difference is not owing to any deficiency of ability turned to the subject, or interest in the materials of which it is formed. It can never be supposed that men will be indifferent to the annals of their own fame, or that the groundwork of all human invention--real event--can be wanting in the means of moving the heart. It is the extraordinary difficulty of this branch of composition, owing to its magnitude and complication, which is the sole cause of the difference.