hich contains characters very superficially drawn, or so
distorted as to be actual monstrosities, such as are not to be found
in nature; but the course of events and the play of the action are so
intricate, and we feel so much for the hero in the situation in which
he is placed, that we are not content until we see the knot untangled
and the hero rescued. The action is so cleverly governed and guided in
its course that we remain in a state of constant curiosity as to what
is going to happen, and we are utterly unable to form a guess; so that
between eagerness and surprise our interest is kept active; and as we
are pleasantly entertained, we do not notice the lapse of time. Most
of Kotzebue's plays are of this character. For the mob this is the
right thing: it looks for amusement, something to pass the time, not
for intellectual perception. Beauty is an affair of such perception;
hence sensibility to beauty varies as much as the intellectual
faculties themselves. For the inner truth of a representation, and its
correspondence with the real nature of humanity, the mob has no sense
at all. What is flat and superficial it can grasp, but the depths of
human nature are opened to it in vain.

It is also to be observed that dramatic representations which depend
for their value on their interest lose by repetition, because they are
no longer able to arouse curiosity as to their course, since it is
already known. To see them often, makes them stale and tedious. On
the other hand, works of which the value lies in their beauty gain by
repetition, as they are then more and more understood.

Most novels are on the same footing as dramatic representations of
this character. They are creatures of the same sort of imagination as
we see in the story-teller of Venice and Naples, who lays a hat on the
ground and waits until an audience is assembled. Then he spins a tale
which so captivates his hearers that, when he gets to the catastrophe,
he makes a round of the crowd, hat in hand, for contributions, without
the least fear that his hearers will slip away. Similar story-tellers
ply their trade in this country, though in a less direct fashion. They
do it through the agency of publishers and circulating libraries. Thus
they can avoid going about in rags, like their colleagues elsewhere;
they can offer the children of their imagination to the public under
the title of novels, short stories, romantic poems, fairy tales, and
so on; and the pub