Ir is to little purpose, we think, to attempt to enter into critical disquisitions on what does or does not fall under the description of beauty or of sublimity. Nor is it, in our opinion, of much avail, to go far into metaphysical enumeration of the different elements of which they may be constituted.

We should say, generally, that all the powers of our nature to which delight is annexed, are capable of a beauty of their own. Nor does more appear to be required to produce this perception, than the intimate blending of delight with the object presented; a blending so deep, that the object, when incapable of sense, shall appear to the mind invested with that power of emotion which the mind indeed brings forth from itself. In connexion with the fact of this dependence of beauty on the capacity of delight in the soul, and on the power of the object to raise up such a sudden suffusion of that feeling as shall spread over itself, it may be observed, that our feeling to beauty is very variable; and that a state of greatly excited and joyous sensibility is capable of shedding the appearance of beauty over objects and scenes, like the sudden lighting up of sunshine, which do not at other times so recommend themselves to the imagination.

As delight is the source of beauty, so pain and fear, and power, which subdues pain and fear, are the sources of sublimity. There may be said, as possibly we may have somewhere

VOL. XXXI. NO, CLXXXVIII.

CRITIQUE IV.

PART I.

else hinted, to be two classes of sublime objects; those which shake the soul and make it tremble in its strength, and those on the contemplation of which it feels itself elated and fuli of power. Or rather, it may be said, that both these kinds of emotion belong to sublimity; for both may perhaps be felt towards the same object in varying tempers of the mind.

In Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, we believe the first attempt was made to establish terror as the source of sublimity; and assuredly it is one of its great elements. The error of the theory seems to have consisted in describing this as its sole constituent. Thunder, and the roar of ocean, and the roar of human battle, is sublime, because fear and power are there mingled into one. Mountains that lift up their eternal heads into the sky, that hang their loose rocks aloft, and pour the rage of cataracts down their riven cliffs, mingle power and fear together to the human soul that beholds them in its awe. Hence it is, that the imagination of men, fearfully awakened in its superstitions, has gathered signs and voices which to our apprehension are now sublime; because the fears of those who were terror-stricken, and the unknown powers which were the objects of their dread, are present to our mind together. How has Milton united power, and fear, and physical pangs, in vast and dread sublimity, when he has shewn those mighty fallen angels,

3 I

in their yet unvanquished and seemingly indestructible strength, arraying themselves to new war, in the midst of their dolorous regions of pain, in the dark and fiery dwellingplace of their eternal punishment! Over the whole earth, then, sublimity is spread, wherever fear and power meet together. The shadow of death is sublime, when it has fallen on a whole generation, and buried them in the sleep of sin. The power of decay is sublime, when

"Oblivion swallows cities up, And mighty states characterless are grated To dusty nothing."

Every spirit of Power is sublime in itself; every spirit of Fear is sublime, when it has ceased to gripe and crush the heart,-when it can be surveyed in Imagination. Pain, which sickens the soul, and humbles it in the dust of mortality, can yet mix with sublimity when it is only half triumphant, and the spirit in its might yet wrestles with the pangs under which it is about to expire. "I see before me the Gladiator lie; He leans upon his hand-his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his droop'd head sinks gradually low

And through his side the last drops,

ebbing slow

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder shower; and

Shall he expire, And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire."

Pain, endurance, and in death a prophetic dream of retaliation and revenge! Such sublimity did Byron feel in that Dying Gladiator, that, in the troubled light of his far-seeing imagination suddenly inspired, he connected with his fall that of the mightiest of empires, and from the arena's bloody dust arose a vision of siege, storm, and sack-of Rome herself, set on fire by the yet unborn brethren of that one barbarian, “butchered to make a Roman holyday," fierce-flocking from their forests to raze with the ground all the imperial palaces of the city of the Ca

sars.

Many other elements, no doubt, besides those we have mentioned, may enter into sublimity. What we have wished to indicate, is the region of the soul, where it is to be found. It dwells in the region of its power-whether that power be made present to its consciousness in calmness; or in the uprisings of its might; or in agitations that reach into its depths. In some of its forms it is totally disunited from Beauty, which lives only in the capacity of Delight. In others it is intimately and indivisibly blended with it. Who will say in the great poems of Milton or of Homer, where the quality begins or where it ceases? Who will say among the spirits of men, which are to be numbered with the Beautiful, and which with the Sublime ?

We commonly seek for examples in the physical world. These offer themselves readily because they have hold upon our senses. But the passion of sublimity is as much moved, and certainly may be more strongly excited, by the delineation of spiritual power. Prometheus! a mighty persecuted spirit, subject to overruling power, and punished without a crime-for is it crime to "steal the fire of heaven?" Lifting up his undaunted brow and voice to call on the earth and the winds and the seas to witness his unjust sufferings, maintaining in the prospect of his interminable punishment-for so he thought it, though Hercules set him free-all the calmness of his prophetic intelligence, and all the undisturbed fortitude of his indomitable heart-let the vulture

his

liver, as it seemed good to it and to gnaw Jupiter and filling with the grandeur of his own being the solitary magnificence of nature! Satan-is not he sublime? What sayeth he to his mates? "Fallen cherubs! to be weak is miserable-doing or suffering!" "Better to reign in Hell than

serve in Heaven!" And is not Achilles sublime-sovereign even over the King of Men, and slave but to his own passions, and in the wild world of the will, whence rise up from bright or black fountains all the bliss and all the bale that enrapture or agonize

life.

That man is not ignorant of Homer who has read, even in translation, the First Book of the Iliad. He knows