of communicating any of the interest of a novel to a story
of the Lower Empire.

In this respect there is an important distinction between the drama and
the historical romance, which writers in the latter style would do well to
keep in view. Tragedy being limited in general to a very short period,
during which events of the most heart-rending kind are accumulated
together, in order as strongly as possible to awaken the sympathy, or move
the hearts of the spectators, it is comparatively of little importance
where the scene is laid. Where the bones and muscles of the mind are laid
bare by deep affliction, mankind in all ages and countries are the same.
The love of Juliet, the jealousy of Othello, are felt with equal force in
all parts of the world. We can sympathize as strongly with the protracted
woes of Andromache, or the generous self-immolation of Antigone, as the
Athenian audience who wept at the eloquence of Euripides or the power of
Sophocles: we feel the death of Wallenstein to be as sublime as the
Germans who are transported by the verses of Schiller; and they weep at
the heroism of Mary Stuart, with as heartfelt emotion as the people of
Scotland to whom her name is a household word. But it is otherwise with
romance. It is occasionally, and at considerable intervals only, that
these terrible or pathetic scenes are represented in its pages, which
sweep away all peculiarities of nation, age, or race, and exhibit only the
naked human heart: nineteen-twentieths of its pages are taken up with
ordinary occurrences, one-half of its interest is derived from the
delineation of manners, or the developing of character in dialogue, which
exhibits none of the vehement passions; and the interest of the reader is
kept up chiefly by the fidelity of the drawing, the spirit of the
conversation, or the accuracy and brilliancy of the descriptions. If these
prove uninteresting from their being too remote from ordinary observation
or association, the work will fail, with whatever talent or power its
principal and tragic scenes may be executed.

In proposing as the grand requisite to the historical romance, that the
subject should be of an _elevating and ennobling kind_, we by no means
intend to assert that the author is always to be on stilts, that he is
never to descend to the description of low or even vulgar life, or that
humour and characteristic description are to be excluded from his
composition. We are well aware of the value o