Each age adds and takes away something.

What can be done?
It is the decree of fate.
In vain, therefore, should we seek to petrify the mobile physiognomy of our idiom in a fixed form.

In vain do our literary Joshuas cry out to the language to stand still; languages and the sun do not stand still.

The day when they become _fixed_, they are dead .-- That is why the French of a certain contemporary school is a dead language.
Such are, substantially, but without the more elaborate development which would make the evidence in their favour more complete, the _present_ ideas of the author of this book concerning the drama.

He is far, however, from presuming to put forth his first dramatic essay as an emanation of these ideas, which, on the contrary, are themselves, it may be, simply results of its execution.