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Show 538 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE. petuous character ? - " From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step." The theatrical art is an union of all the others-poetry, music, painting, dancing, pantomime, architecture, &c.; well-informed persons, therefore, only can be good judges of the merits or demerits of dramatic productions. People in general, however, think otherwise ; the facility afforded of going to a theatre, and there enjoying a perfect liberty of thought and action, as it were, makes all men critics. Dramatic works have not the same advantages as other productions of art. In a theatre, all who pay at the door criticise the piece, and every body pronounces boldly and definitively on its value. If the same mob of judges were taken to a gallery of paintings and statues, two thirds, at the least, of them would frankly and modestly avow, that they were not connoisseurs enough to decide on what was presented for their opinions. And is it less difficult to pronounce judgment on the poet, the composer, or the performer, than the sculptor and the painter ? W e do not think so. A picture or a statue, expressing but a single action-the simple movement of a passion, makes an impression on our senses, which lasts as long as the object remains before our eyes, and gives us time to analyze our ideas, and to pronounce a just opinion upon it. But it is a different case with the talent of an actor, who, in a single hour, depicts many passions, and different combinations of them; during this brief space, he presents a multitude of pictures, each of which makes only a fugitive impression upon the mind, impatient all the time to arrive at the denouement. It is necessary to possess a fine tact, and considerable experience, to follow this moral painter in his rapid but powerful pictures, each of which disappears before its successor is exhibited. Mere literary knowledge is not a suf- |