t they do
not on that account cease to be ends themselves; and we must remember
that, as such, they carry their own justification with them, as long as
they do not contravene or interrupt the total illusion. It is not even
always, or of necessity, an objection to them, that they prevent the
illusion from rising to as great a height as it might otherwise have
attained;--it is enough that they are simply compatible with as high a
degree of it as is requisite for the purpose. Nay, upon particular
occasions, a palpable improbability may be hazarded by a great genius for
the express purpose of keeping down the interest of a merely instrumental
scene, which would otherwise make too great an impression for the harmony
of the entire illusion. Had the panorama been invented in the time of Pope
Leo X., Raffael would still, I doubt not, have smiled in contempt at the
regret, that the broom twigs and scrubby bushes at the back of some of his
grand pictures were not as probable trees as those in the exhibition.

The _Tempest_ is a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in which the
interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture, or
the natural connection of events, but is a birth of the imagination, and
rests only upon the coaptation and union of the elements granted to, or
assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama which owes no allegiance to
time or space, and in which, therefore, errors of chronology and
geography--no mortal sins in any species--are venial faults, and count for
nothing. It addresses itself entirely to the imaginative faculty; and
although the illusion may be assisted by the effect on the senses of the
complicated scenery and decorations of modern times, yet this sort of
assistance is dangerous. For the principal and only genuine excitement
ought to come from within--from the moved and sympathetic imagination;
whereas, where so much is addressed to the mere external senses of seeing
and bearing, the spiritual vision is apt to languish, and the attraction
from without will withdraw the mind from the proper and only legitimate
interest which is intended to spring from within.

The romance opens with a busy scene admirably appropriate to the kind of
drama, and giving, as it were, the key-note to the whole harmony. It
prepares and initiates the excitement required for the entire piece, and
yet does not demand anything from the spectators, which their previous
habits had not fitted them to un