In the arts which address themselves to the _eye_, and through it to the heart, it is possible to produce a very strong impression almost instantaneously. A beautiful woman has only to be seen to be admired; a charming landscape bursts upon the sight with immediate and almost magical force. The impression produced by the finest objects in Europe,--the sun setting on the Jungfrawhorn, the interior of St Peter's, the fall of Schaffhausen, the view on the Acropolis of Athens, Constantinople from the Seraglio point, the Bay of Naples, for example,--is such, that though seen _only_ for a few minutes, it may almost be said seconds, an impression is made, a picture is painted, on the mind's retina, which can never be effaced. Painting, as it imitates external nature, so it shares in the rapidity and, in the hands of great masters, durability of its impressions. Sculpture and architecture have the same advantage. Yet even in these arts, the productions of which require only to be seen to be admired, it is well known that the impression, strong as it is at first, is, with all persons of a cultivated mind, greatly increased by repeated inspections. The common observation, that a fine painting or statue grows upon you the oftener you see it, and that "Time but the impression deeper wears," sufficiently proves that it is not at once, even in those arts which speak at once to the eye, that the soul of the artist is transferred to that of the spectator. But the case is entirely different with those arts--such as history, romance, epic poetry, or the drama--which do not at once produce a visible object to the mind, but give descriptions or dialogues by which the reader or spectator is required to form a _mental_ object or awaken a mental interest of his own creation, though from the materials furnished, and under the guidance of the genius of the artist. It is not instantaneously that this can be done: on the contrary, it is by very slow degrees and many successive efforts that the inward picture is created in the mind, the absorbing interest awakened in the heart, which gives the pleasure or rouses the sympathy which is the object of the writer to communicate. A very little reflection will be sufficient to show that this observation is well founded, in all the arts of narrative or description. And nothing, we apprehend, can be clearer than that the Romantic Drama has failed because it professes, within limits and by means which render the attempt hopeless, to excite this interest.