human mind? Or shall we look to the national feelings, sympathies, tastes, and legends, which the masters of the Greek, as well of the Spanish and of the English drama, unveiled in their immortal creations to the very depths? This is the true reason why these nations alone possess a drama of their own--this is the reason which accounts for the triumph of ancient as well as modern art--not an ambiguous and obscure phrase, but a principle which must insure the originality of the drama, so long as man is man. If we pursue the comparison between the drama of Spain and England, we shall find the period of its golden age far more circumscribed in the latter than in the former. In the latter, it cannot be said to reach beyond the time of Charles the First; and from the time of Shakspeare its decline is visible. But in Spain, from the end of the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century, during a period when poetry was almost forgotten throughout the rest of Europe, the stream of the Spanish drama held on its majestic course, supplied from an ever-gushing fountain, and reflecting from its radiant surface all the varieties of human life. If Shakspeare has reached the very summit of all poetry, and a height to which no Spanish dramatist has ascended, the interval which divides him from every other of his countrymen is enormous. But the drama in Spain is not bound up with a single name, or with individual genius; it can exhibit a galaxy of light, and many constellations contribute to its lustre. The starry host, of which Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are the Lucifers, far surpasses in numbers and splendour that which any other country can exhibit; nor would the dull, brutal, stupid, hard-hearted, and obscene ribaldry which (Congreve excepted) is the prevailing characteristic of the popular writers of Charles the Second's time, and especially of Wycherley, have been endured by the Spanish peasant for a moment.