In truth, the adoption of the Romantic style in theatrical composition, and the tenacity with which, despite centuries of failure, it is still adhered to by dramatic poets, is mainly to be ascribed to a secret sense of inability to work up the simpler old drama of Greece with the requisite force and effect. Men distrust their own powers in awaking a continued interest for hours from one incident, or the portraying of a single catastrophe. They are fain to borrow the adventitious aid to be derived, as they think, from frequent changes of time and place. They rail at the drama of Athens, as many modern artists do at the paintings of Claude Lorraine, because they feel themselves unable to imitate them. They crowd their canvass with objects, from a secret sense of inability to finish any one with perfect force and fidelity. In that way they flatter themselves that the defects of their composition will be less strongly felt, and the audience will experience something like the enjoyment of foreign travelling without any great trouble on the part of their conductor, on the brilliant succession of pictures which is presented to their intellectual vision. They forget only one thing, but it generally proves fatal to their whole undertaking. Foreign travelling is delightful; but it is only so when sufficient time is allowed to see the objects properly, and take in the impression. Without this, it is little more than a grievous fatigue, relieved by one or two splendid but fleeting pictures painted on the mind. The drama being limited to a three hours' representation, must portray the events of years, if it attempts it, at railway speed. Thence it is, that no greater pleasure is in general felt from its representations than from seeing the tops of villages or the steeples of churches fleeting past when travelling fifty miles an hour on the Great Western. If we would really enjoy nature, we must stop short and sketch one of them, and then we shall feel pleasure indeed.