as greenness, sweetness, fragrance, are pleasing; and the pleasing exits as truly as the beautiful, and is as fit an object of philosophic investigation.

After these remarks on beauty, it is unnecessary to make any remarks on the opposite emotion,-the same observations, as to their nature, and the circumstances that produce or modify them, being equally applicable to both. As certain forms, colours, sounds, motions, works of art, and moral affections, are contemplated with delight,-the contemplation of certain other forms, colours, sounds, motions, works of art, and affections of our moral nature, is attended with a disagreeable emotion. I have also remarked, that for this opposite emotion, in its full extent, we have no adequate name;-deformity, and even ugliness,-which is a more general word,-being usually applied only to external things, and not to the intellectual or moral objects of our thought; as we apply beauty alike to all. There can be no doubt, however, that the same analogy, which connects our various emotions of beauty, sensitive, intellectual, and moral, exists equally, in the emotions of this opposite class; and that, though we are not accustomed to speak of the ugly, and to inquire what constitutes it, as we have been accustomed to inquire into the beautiful, and its supposed constituents, it is only because beauty is the more attractive, and the empire which itself possesses, is possessed, in some measure, by its very name.

After the attention which we have paid to the emotions, that are usually classed together, under the general name of beauty, the emotions to the consideration of which we have next to proceed, are those which constitute our feelings of sublimity. On these, however, it will not be necessary to dwell at any great length; since you will be able, of yourselves, to apply to them many of the remarks, that were suggested by the consideration of the former species of emotion.

The feeling of sublimity, it may well be supposed, does not arise without a cause, more than our feeling of beauty; but the sublimity which we feel, like the beauty which we feel, is an affection of our mind, not a quality of any thing external. It is a feeling, however, which like the feeling of beauty, we reflect back on the object that excited it, as if it truly formed a part of the object; and thus, instead of being merely the unknown cause of our emotion,-as when it is philosophically viewed, the object which impresses itself on our mind, and almost on our senses, as sublime, is felt by us, as our own embodied emotion,-mingled, indeed, with other qualities that are mate

rial, but diffused in them with an existence that seems independent of our temporary feeling.

When Dryden said, of one of our most powerful and most delightful passions,

"The cause of love can never be asign'd;
'Tis in no face, but in the lover's mind,"

he probably was not aware, that he was saying what was not poetically only, but philosophically true, though in a sense different from that which he meant to convey. It is not the capricious passion alone which the lover feels, as in himself, but the very beauty that is felt by him in the external object, which is as truly an emotion of his own mind as the passion to which it may have given rise. Of all those forms, on which we gaze with a delight that is never weary, because the pleasure which we have felt, as reflected by us to the object, is to us almost a source of the pleasure which we feel at the moment, or are about to feel,-what, I have asked, would the loveliest be, but for the eyes which gaze on it, and which give it all its charms, as they give it the very unity that converts it into the form which we behold? A multitude of separate and independent atoms, we found ourselves obliged to answer, and nothing more. In like manner, I might ask, what, but for the mind which is impressed with the sublimity, would be the precipice, the cataract, the ocean, the whole system of worlds, that seem at once to fill the immensity of space, and yet to leave on our conception an infinity, which even worlds without number could not fill? To these, too, sublime as they are felt by us to be, it is our mind alone, which gives at once all the unity and sublimity, which they seem to us to possess, as of their own nature. They are, in truth, only a number of atoms, that would be precisely the same in themselves, whether existing near to each other, or at distances the most remote. But it is impossible for us, to regard them merely as a number of atoms; because they affect us with one complex emotion, which we diffuse over them all. When precipice hangs over precipice, and we shrink back on our perilous height, as we strive to look down from the cliff, on the abyss beneath,-in which we rather hear the torrent, than see it, with our shuddering and dazzled eye, we have one vivid, though complicated feeling, which fills our whole soul; and the whole objects existing separately before us, are one vast and terrifying image of all that is within us. In the hurricane that lays waste, and almost annihilates whatever it meets, there is to our conception something more than the mere particles of air that form each successive blast. We animate it with our own feelings.

It is not a cause of terror only, it is terror itself. It seems to bear about with it that awful sublimity, of which we are conscious, an emotion, that as it animates our corporeal frame with one expansive feeling, seems to give a sort of dreadful unity to the whole thunders of the tempest, or rather to form one mighty being of the whole minute elements, that when they rage, impelling and impelled, in the tumultuous atmosphere, are merely congregated, by accidental vicinity, as they exist equally together in the gentlest breeze, or in the stillness of the summer sky.

That sublimity should be reflected to the object from the mind, like beauty, is not wonderful; since, in truth, what we term beauty, and sublimity, are not opposite, but, in the greater number of cases, are merely different parts of a series of emotions. I have already, in treating of beauty, pointed out to you the error into which the common language of philosophers might be very apt to lead you,--the error of supposing, that beauty is one emotion, merely because we have invented that generic or specific name, which comprehends at once many agreeable emotions; that have some resemblance, indeed, as being agreeable, and diffused, as it were, or concentrated in their objects, and are therefore classed together, but still are far from being the same. The beautiful, concerning which philosophers have been at so much pains in their inquiries, is, as we have seen, in the mode in which they conceive it to exist, a sort of real essence,-an universal a parte rei, which has retained its hold of the belief when other universals of this kind, not less real, had been suffered to retain a place, only in the insignificant vocabulary of scholastic logic.

Our emotions of beauty, I have said, are various; and, as they gradually rise, from object to object, a sort of regular progression may be traced from the faintest beauty, to the vastest. sublimity. These extremes may be considered as united, by a class of intermediate feelings, for which grandeur might, perhaps, be a suitable term, that have more of beauty, or more of sublimity, according to their place in the scale of emotion. I have retained, however, the common twofold division of beauty and sublimity, not as thinking that there may not be intermediate feelings, which scarcely admit of being very suitably classed under either of these names, but because the same general reasoning must be applicable to all these states of mind, whatever names, or number of names, may be given to the varieties that fill up the intervening space. Indeed, if all the various emotions, to which, in their objects, we attach the single name of beautiful, were attentively considered, we might find reason to form, of this single order, many subdivisions,

with their appropriate terms; but this precision of minute nomenclature, in such a case, is of less importance, if you know sufficiently the general fact involved in it,-that there is not one beauty, or one sublimity, but various feelings, to which, in their objects, we give the name of beauty, and various feelings, to which, in their objects, we give the name of sublimity; and that there may be intermediate feelings which differ from these, as these respectively differ from each other. That which happens, in innumerable other cases, has happened in this case; we have a series of many feelings; we have invented the names, sublimity and beauty, which we have attached to certain parts of this series; and, because we have invented the names, we think that the emotions which they designate, are more opposed to each other, than they seemed to us before. One feeling of beauty differs from another feeling of beauty; but they are both comprehended in the same term, and we forget the difference. One feeling of sublimity differs, in like manner, from another feeling of sublimity; but they also are both comprehended in one term, and their difference too is forgotten. It is not so, when we compare one emotion of beauty with another emotion of sublimity; the feelings are then not merely different, but they are expressed by a different term; and their opposition is thus doubly forced upon us. If we had not invented any terms whatever, we should have seen, as it were, a series of emotions, all shadowing into each other, with differences of tint, more or less strong, and rapidly distinguishable. The invention of the terms, however, is like the intersection of the series, at certain places, with a few well-marked lines. The shadowing may still, in itself, be equally gradual; but we think of the sections only, and perceive a peculiar resemblance in the parts comprehended in each, as we think that we perceive a peculiar diversity at each bending line.

To be convinced how readily the feelings, contrasted as they may seem at last, have flowed into each other, let us take some example. Let us imagine that we see before us, a stream gently gliding through fields, rich with all the luxuriance of summer, over-shadowed at times by the foliage that hangs over it, from bank to bank, and then suddenly sparkling in the open sunshine, as if with a still brighter current than before. Let us trace it, till it widen to a majestic river, of which the waters are the boundary of two flourishing empires, conveying abundance equally to each, while city succeeds city, on its populous shores, almost with the same rapidity as grove formerly succeeded grove. Let us next behold it, losing itself in the immensity of the ocean, which seems to be only an expansion of itself, when there is not an object to be seen but its

own wild amplitude, between the banks which it leaves, and the sun that is setting, as if in another world, in the remote horizon;-in all this course, from the brook, which we leap over, if it meet us in our way to that boundless waste of waters, in which the power of man, that leaves some vestige of his existence in every thing else, is not able to leave one lasting impression, which, after his fleets have passed along in all their pride, is the very moment after, as if they had never been, and which bears or dashes those navies that are contending for the mastery of kingdoms, only as it bears or dashes the foam upon its waves,-if we were to trace and contemplate this whole continued progress, we should have a series of emotions, which might, at each moment, be similar to the preceding emotion, but which would become, at last, so different from our earliest feelings, that we should scarcely think of them as feelings of one class. The emotions which rose, when we regarded the narrow stream, would be those which we class as emotions of beauty. The emotions which rose, when we considered that infinity of waters, in which it was ultimately lost, would be of the kind which we denominate sublimity; and the grandeur of the river, while it was still distinguishable from the ocean, to which it was proceeding, might be viewed with feelings, to which some other name or names, might, on the same principle of distinction, be given. This progressive series, we should see very distinctly, as progressive, if we had not invented, the two general terms; but the invention of the terms, certainly, does not alter the nature of these feelings, which the terms are employed merely to signify.

Innumerable other examples,-from increasing magnitude of dimensions, or increasing intensity of quality,-might be selected, in illustration of that species of sublimity which we feel in the contemplation of external things, as progressively rising from emotions that would be termed emotions of beauty, if they were considered alone. It is unnecessary, however, to repeat, with other examples, what is sufficiently evident, without any other illustration, from the case already instanced.

The same progressive series of feelings, which may thus be traced as we contemplate works of nature, is not less evident in the contemplation of works of human art, whether that art have been employed in material things, or be purely intellectual. From the cottage to the cathedral-from the simplest ballad air, to the harmony of a choral anthem-from a pastoral to an epic poem, or a tragedy--from a landscape, or a sculptured Cupid, to a Cartoon, or the Laocoon-from a single experiment in chemistry, to the elucidation of the whole system of chemical affinities, which regulate all the changes on the