We have stated what are the limits of the drama, and what part is assigned to it in the general effort of the human mind to portray events, or paint the human heart. Macaulay has explained, in the passage already quoted, what the Romantic drama proposes to do, and the reason why, in his estimation, it is more likely to attain its end than the more closely fettered theatre of the Greeks. The whole question comes to be, which of the two systems is best adapted to attain the undoubted end of all dramatic composition, the painting of the human heart? If he is right in the views he has so well expressed, it is very singular how it has happened, that in a country which, for the last three centuries, has constantly adhered to these ideas, and worked out the Romantic drama with extraordinary zeal and vigour, dramatic representations should have been constantly declining, so as at length to be threatened with total extinction. This becomes the more remarkable, when it is recollected, that in other countries, inferior in wealth, genius, and energy to Great Britain, but where the old system had been adhered to, it continued to flourish in undiminished vigour, and that decay in them has uniformly been coexistent with the entry on the stage of Romantic representation. Racine, Corneille, Voltaire in France, and Metastasio and Alfieri in Italy, Schiller and Goethe in Germany, have nobly upheld the legitimate drama in their respective countries. Still more extraordinary is it, if these views be the correct ones, that while, by the marvels of one heaven-born genius, the Romantic drama was in the days of Queen Elizabeth raised to the very highest perfection in this country, it has since continually languished, and cannot from his day number one name destined for immortality among its votaries.