The look, which can be given only very imperfectly by Sculpture,
enables us to read much deeper in the mind and perceive its lightest
movements. Its peculiar charm, in short, consists in this, that it
enables us to see in bodily objects what is least corporeal, namely,
light and air.

The very same description of beauties are peculiar to the romantic
drama. It does not (like the Old Tragedy) separate seriousness and the
action, in a rigid manner, from among the whole ingredients of life;
it embraces at once the whole of the chequered drama of life with all
its circumstances; and while it seems only to represent subjects
brought accidentally together, it satisfies the unconscious
requisitions of fancy, buries us in reflections on the inexpressible
signification of the objects which we view blended by order, nearness
and distance, light and color, into one harmonious whole; and thus
lends, as it were, a soul to the prospect before us.

The change of time and of place (supposing its influence on the mind
to be included in the picture and that it comes to the aid of the
theatrical perspective, with reference to what is indicated in the
distance, or half-concealed by intervening objects); the contrast of
gayety and gravity (supposing that in degree and kind they bear a
proportion to each other); finally, the mixture of the dialogical and
the lyrical elements (by which the poet is enabled, more or less
perfectly, to transform his personages into poetical beings)--these,
in my opinion, are not mere licenses, but true beauties in the
romantic drama. In all these points, and in many others also, the
English and Spanish works, which are preeminently worthy of this title
of Romantic, fully resemble each other, however different they may be
in other respects.