It is not to the discredit of the Anglo-Saxon race that it loves savage sports.

The blood is naturally fierce, and has not been cowed by the tyranny endured by European races.

There have been more free men under England's worst tyrants than under France's most liberal kings.
But, failing gladiators and wild beasts, the people must have horrors on the stage, in literature, in art, and, above all, in the daily press.
Shakspere knew that, and Michelangelo, who is the Shakspere of brush and chisel, knew it also, as those two unrivalled men seem to have known everything else.

And so when Michelangelo painted the _Last Judgment_, and Shakspere wrote _Othello_ (for instance), they both made use of horror in a way the Greeks would not have tolerated.

Since we no longer see daily enacted before us scenes of murder, torture, and public execution, our curiosity makes us desire to see those scenes represented as accurately as possible.