witticisms, endeavor to conceal the vulgarity of their subject. I
remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stuart:
and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth--though she did it
very well--I could not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played
the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic
feeling, of which, indeed, the French have no notion at all. The same
part was incomparably better played by the Italian Ristori; and, in
fact, the Italian nature, though in many respects very different from
the German, shares its appreciation for what is deep, serious, and
true in Art; herein opposed to the French, which everywhere betrays
that it possesses none of this feeling whatever.

The noble, in other words, the uncommon, element in the drama--nay,
what is sublime in it--is not reached until the intellect is set to
work, as opposed to the will; until it takes a free flight over all
those passionate movements of the will, and makes them subject of its
contemplation. Shakespeare, in particular, shows that this is his
general method, more especially in Hamlet. And only when intellect
rises to the point where the vanity of all effort is manifest, and the
will proceeds to an act of self-annulment, is the drama tragic in the
true sense of the word; it is then that it reaches its highest aim in
becoming really sublime.

* * * * *

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits
of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that
error of the eye which lets us fancy that on the horizon heaven and
earth meet. This explains many things, and among them the fact that
everyone measures us with his own standard--generally about as long as