ls cringe and crawl, where the probity of talent has so
often been misrepresented, where the noble innocence of genius is
sometimes so out of place, where mediocrity triumphs in lowering to
its level the superiority which obscures it, where one finds so many
small men for a single great one, so many nobodies for one Talma, so
many myrmidons for one Achilles! This sketch will seem ill-tempered
perhaps, and far from flattering; but does it not fully mark out the
distance that separates our stage, the abode of intrigues and uproar,
from the solemn serenity of the ancient stage?

Whatever may happen, he feels bound to warn in advance that small
number of persons whom such a production might attract, that a play
made up of excerpts from _Cromwell_ would occupy no less time then is
ordinarily occupied by a theatrical performance. It is difficult for
a _romantic_ theatre to maintain itself otherwise. Surely, if people
desire something different from the tragedies in which one or two
characters, abstract types of a purely metaphysical idea, stalk
solemnly about on a narrow stage occupied only by a few confidents,
colourless reflections of the heroes, employed to fill the gaps in a
simple, unified, single-stringed plot; if that sort of thing has
grown tiresome, a whole evening is not too much time to devote to
delineating with some fullness a man among men, a whole critical
period: the one, with his peculiar temperament, his genius which
adapts itself thereto, his beliefs which dominate them both, his
passions which throw out of gear his temperament, his genius and his
beliefs, his tastes which give colour to his passions, his habits
which regulate his tastes and muzzle his passions, and with the
innumerable procession of men of every sort whom these various
elements keep in constant commotion about him; the other, with
its manners, its laws, its fashions, its wit, its attainments, its
superstitions, its events, and its people, whom all these first causes
in turn mould like soft wax. It is needless to say that such a picture
will be of huge proportions. Instead of one personality, like that
with which the abstract drama of the old school is content, there will
be twenty, forty, fifty,--who knows how many?--of every size and of
every degree of importance. There will be a crowd of characters in the
drama. Would it not be niggardly to assign it two hours only, and
give up the rest of the performance to opera-comique or farce? to cu