pity and terror, if they do accumulate in their particular forms latently, are specifically such as it is wise to be rid of, does not differentiate emotion from the rest of our powers in all of which there is a similar pleasure in exercising, an exhaustion and a relief, with less liability of immediate recurrence; this belongs to all expenditure of life. It is not credible to me that painful emotion, under the illusions of art, can become pleasurable in the common sense; what pleasure there is arises only in the climax and issue of the action, as in case of the drama when the restoration of the order that is joyful, beautiful, right, and wise occurs; in other words, in the presence of the final poetic justice or reconciliation of the disturbed elements of life. But here we come upon darker and mysterious aspects of our general subject, now to be slightly touched. Tragedy dealing with the discords of life must present painful spectacles; and is saved to art only by its just ending. Comedy, which similarly deals with discords, is endurable only while these remain painless. Both imply a defect in order, and neither would have any place in a perfect world, which would be without pity, fear, or humour, all of which proceed from incongruities in the scheme. Tragedy and comedy belong alike to low civilizations, to wicked, brutal, or ridiculous types of character and disorderly events, to the confusion, ignorance, and ignominies of mankind; the refinement of both is a mark of progress in both art and civilization, and foretells their own extinction, unless indeed the principle of evil be more deeply implanted in the universe than we fondly hope; pathos and humour, which are the milder and the kindlier forms of tragedy and comedy, must also cease, for both are equally near to tears. But before leaving this subject it is interesting to observe how in the Aristotelian scheme of tragedy, where it was little thought of, the appeal is made to man's whole nature as here outlined—the plot replying to reason, the scene to the sense of beauty, the katharsis to the emotions, and poetic justice to the will, which thus finds its model and exemplar in the supremacy of the moral law in all tragic art.

This, then, being the nature of the ideal world in its whole range commensurate with our being, and these the methods of its intellectual and emotional appeal, it remains to examine the world of art in itself, and especially its genesis out of life. The method by which it is built up has long been recognized to be that of imitation of the actual, as has been assumed hitherto in the statement that all art is concrete. But the concrete which art creates is not a copy of the concrete of life; it is more than this. The mind 

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