eople given to impersonation, to
posing, and to representation. We are sublime in our earnestness, and
silly in our trifling. We like best to sit still in our private corner
behind the stove, and we grow red and awkward if we have to pass
through a room where there are ten unknown men, or even as many ladies,
watching us. Only the highest problems of tragic poetry give us wings
to lift us over these chasms. When we attempt to walk with metrical
feet, which are shod with winged shoes, we get on very well. But on our
own flat every-day extremities, we stumble so wretchedly that an
ordinary Frenchman or Italian, who can neither read nor write, appears
like a prince of the blood beside us."

"I wish I were able to deny all this," said Felix. "Unfortunately we
have no real society; and where we have the germs of one, actors are as
a rule excluded from it. But though that part of your art that has to
do with the representation of human beings and a characteristic
imitation of life suffers from this, the higher branches still continue
to be our domain; and if you compare the art of tragedy among the
Italians or the French with our representations of Shakespeare and
Goethe--"

"That is all very true," interrupted the actor; "in what is spiritual
and belongs to an inner consciousness, we can always bear comparison
with our neighbors. But only wait ten years longer and you will see
that not a soul here in Germany will ever think of going to see a
tragedy, and our classical theatre will be then just such another
puppet-show as the Theatre Francais is now. Ought we to be surprised at
this? All tragedy is aristocratic. Why should the hero leave this world
with such sublimity and grandeur if it were not that he found it too
miserable for him to feel comfortable in? But he who finds the world a
wretched place insults all those to whom it appears most charming,
because, with their low desires, they are able to take comfort in it.
And inasmuch as the good of the masses will become more and more the
watchword, as time goes on, therefore he who towers above the masses
must not be disappointed if he finds that he cannot be of much use
either in real life or behind the footlights. Tragical heroes are only
possible where social differences exist; where the ordinary man looks
on with a certain respect while a _Coriolanus_ conquers and falls,
without thinking to himself: 'It served him right. Why did he insult us
common folk?' But with our e