Plays on the Passions! "How absurd!" said one philosophical writer. "This will never do!" It has done--perfectly. What, pray, is the aim of all tragedy? The Stagyrite has told us--to purify the passions by pity and terror. They ventilate and cleanse the soul--till its atmosphere is like that of a calm, bright summer day. All plays, therefore, must be on the Passions. And all that Joanna intended--and it was a great intention greatly effected--was in her Series of Dramas to steady her purposes by ever keeping one great end in view, of which the perpetual perception could not fail to make all the means harmonious, and therefore majestic. One passion was, therefore, constituted sovereign of the soul in each glorious tragedy--sovereign sometimes by divine right--sometimes an usurper--generally a tyrant. In De Monfort we behold the horrid reign of Hate. But in his sister--the seraphic sway of Love. Darkness and light sometimes opposed in sublime contrast--and sometimes the light swallowing up the darkness--or "smoothing its raven down till it smiles." Finally, all is black as night and the grave--for the light, unextinguished, glides away into some far-off world of peace. Count Basil! A woman only could have imagined that divine drama. How different the love Basil feels for Victoria from Antony's for Cleopatra! Pure, deep, high as the heaven and the sea. Yet on it we see him borne away to shame, destruction, and death. It is indeed his ruling passion. But up to the day he first saw her face his ruling passion had been the love of glory. And the hour he died by his own hand was troubled into madness by many passions; for are they not all mysteriously linked together, sometimes a dreadful brotherhood?