First, then, as to the province of Tragedy.  Tragedy professes to be a representation of all the high passions that influence the mind, such as jealousy, hatred, or revenge; it can have nothing to do with vanity or any other of the petty passions, for a course of action dependent on them would appear as insignificant in Tragedy as the passions themselves.  Now, what possible advantage, in the way of improvement, can be derived from witnessing a display of all the odious passions of our nature?  Some benefit might indeed be derived, if a moral were attached to Tragedy, but it has no moral (at least very rarely) and for this simple reason:  Tragedy professes to be a speaking picture of life,—­and it is a melancholy but true reflection, that as in real life we see the deserving depressed, and the bad man flourishing in the world, so also it ought to be in Tragedy.  Let us take Macbeth or Richard the Third as examples of this:  we see here two men, by a succession of crime, arriving at the pinnacle of their ambition, and rewarded for giving way to their passions.  There is little or no moral in the death of either, for every honest soldier in their armies was subjected to the same fate, and many of course met with it; so far from being disgraceful, falling in battle is regarded as an honourable end, and it is the death a brave man might wish to die.  Secondly, let us consider the plot in Tragedy, and the characters it works with:  the plot is rarely fictitious, but is generally built either on fact, or on some event that the antiquated errors of fable or history have made sacred; not having in this respect the advantage which Comedy possesses from liberty of invention, and correcting thereby the inequalities of life; and having also the additional fault of laying its scenes for the most part in a foreign country.  The characters of Tragedy are always selected from high life; here is a great defect, for it is by no means a true observation, that men are inclined greatly to pity the misfortunes of their superiors; on the contrary, they are secretly rejoiced at seeing them fall from a situation so much above their own; whereas they sympathize more with their equals, and take a much greater interest in a course of events that is likely to occur to themselves.  Thirdly, let us look to the end that Tragedy has in view.  The main object in a tragic representation is to excite pity and terror in the spectators; in this definition I am amply borne out by authority, for not only Gibbon, Addison, and others, but Voltaire and even Aristotle, have used these very expressions; now how can we be benefited by the excitement of these feelings?  Pity is at the best but a feminine virtue, and by giving way to it, the mind, if not enervated, is at any rate not strengthened; and with regard to terror, a man under its influence is incapable of any reflection whatever.  When we witness, for instance, the tragedy of Macbeth, the mind, after such a scene of human villany is rather inclined to become morbid than to feel either dignified or improved.