It is said in answer to this obvious objection to the Romantic drama, founded on its fate in all the countries where it has been established, that it shares in this respect only in the common destiny of mankind in creating works of imagination; that the period of great and original conception is the first only--that Homer was succeeded by Virgil, AEschylus by Euripides, Dante by Tasso, Shakspeare by Pope, and that the age of genius in all countries is followed by that of criticism.[6] There can be no doubt that this observation is in many respects well founded; but it affords no solution of the causes of the present degraded condition of our national drama, nor does it explain the course it has taken in this country. We have made a progress, but it has not been from originality to taste, but from genius to folly. The age of AEschylus has not with us been succeeded by that of Sophocles and Euripides, but by that of melodrama and _spectacle_. We have not advanced from the wildness of conception to the graces of criticism, but from the rudeness of some barbaric imagination, to the cravings of corrupted fancy. The age of Garrick has been with us succeeded, not by that of Roscius, but by that of Cerito; the melodrama of the _Crusaders_, the dancing of Carlotta Grisi, have banished tragedy from the boards trod by Kemble and Siddons. The modern dramas which have been published, and in part appeared on the stage, have in no respect been distinguished by more legitimate taste, or a stricter adherence to rule, than those of Ford and Massinger, of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Jonson and Shakspeare. They have discarded, indeed, the indecency which forms so serious a blot on our older dramatists, but, in other respects, they have faithfully followed out their principles. The drama still, as in earlier days, professes to exhibit in a few hours a representation of the principal events of a lifetime. Time and place are set at nought, as they were by the bard of Avon, and not unfrequently the last act opens at the distance of years, or hundreds of miles from the first. We need only mention two of the ablest and most popular of our modern dramas--_The Lady of Lyons_, by Bulwer, and the best of Sheridan Knowles' theatrical pieces, for a confirmation of these observations. But no one will pretend that the dramatic works of these writers, excellent in many respects as they are, can be set off against the master-pieces of the Greek or French drama which succeeded the days of AEschylus and Corneille.