lightning of fire what the avalanche of ice had spared.

Thus mountains, glaciers, avalanches, torrents, tempests, are the confederated powers which, with the tyranny of a despot or the clamour of a mob, dispute the sovereignty of the Alps. Anarchy, however, is averted by that conservatism which is nature's central law. Law, order, and consequent stability, constitute the abiding basis of Alpine strength. The storm is not so much a riot as a drama, and Nature allows herself the license of unbridled liberty because she holds within her empire the power of control. The strength implied in self-restraint, the strength of calm tranquillity, the strength of nature's monarchy governing by an absolute will, constitute perhaps the paramount expression of Alpine scenery. The torrent and the storm may rage about the mountain base or summit, yet in the utmost fury the mind looks on with a prevailing sense of stability and security. Though the summits are high, yet the foundations are deep, the buttresses massive, and the materials strong. When the storm is past, and heaven once again clear of the smoke and dust of earth's battle, and stern grandeur melts at the caress of beauty-when the warrior mountains repose, after the conflict, in the gentle lassitude of sunshine -then,not less than in the storm, does the mind, though softened by beauty, exult in the power of the sublime. At all seasons, under all aspects, the imagination is here carried into infinitude; it feels more than the senses see; and, with impetuous bound, plunges into infinite space, infinite time, infinite power. The theatre of operations is so vast, that the eye, in straining to reach its confines, seems to look into boundless space. The years that have passed over the summit of that distant mountain, which seems coeval with the heavens in which it becomes lost, so absolutely transcend finite conception, that to the imagination they are no less than eternity itself. And this infinitude of time and space is but the preceding condition to something greater a recipient sphere, in which a more mighty infinitude shall make itself manifest-the infinitude of

creating power. The fire-power, the ice-power, the torrent and storm powers, of which we have spoken, are but the varying aspects of one central creating power, which imagination, reason, and revelation have alike invested with infinite duration, infinite extension, infinite might. Thus Alpine heights are but steps leading to the summit of a throne on which descends power from heaven to rule on earth-and that power is God.

It is this power which constitutes, in Alpine scenery, the chief essence in the sublime and being the express manifestation of God's omnipotence, alternately subdues the mind to gentleness and lifts it to strength. It has always appeared to us that the sublime suffered degradation when Burke reduced it to the ultimate emotions of pain, fear, torment. Such passages as the following, for example, are little suited to become the groundwork of a noble philosophy :

"Whatever is fitted," says Burke, "in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger-that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime—that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling; I say the strongest emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the part of plea

sure."

We cannot conceive of anything more degrading to art and nature than this low doctrine of pain and pleasure sinking both into mere ministers of the appetites alluring through gratification, or deterring by the scourge of punishment. We would appeal to any man who has felt the spell of nature or of art, who owes to either or to both any debt of gratitude for hours of transport, and a life made more lofty; we would ask of any one who has used the grand and the beautiful as instruments of mental education and advancement, whether 66 pain and pleasure" do adequately express all that he has felt and known? Pleasure he must have tasted, undoubtedly; pain, in some form, he may have endured;

but assuredly he would not epitomise his experience in terms which thus take their origin in bodily sensations rather than from soul-like emotions. That the arts are often turned to, merely as pleasing, elegant episodes to the indulgence of the appetites, cannot be doubted. Pictures are hung on the walls somewhat as side-dishes are placed at a feast; they serve as adjuncts to the wines and sweets, and thus harmoniously complete the circle of sensation. Conversational criticism on such occasions is naturally generated by the palate rather than originated in the intellect. A sunset by Claude is "mellow" and "sweet" and a poem by Tennyson, or a melody by Mendelssohn, is pronounced "delicious." All this is excusable and easily understood; but that a philosopher writing deliberately on the "sublime," should

thus reduce the noblest of emotions

to mere pain, pleasure, and sensation, is not readily to be forgiven. Better were it to allow mankind, in the mystery of unexplained emotion, to watch the glow of sunset on distant mountains, or to listen to the dash of storm-waves as they break on the rocky shore, than, through a pretended philosophy, thus to disenchant the imagination and leave the intel

lect uninformed.

Burke erred by making "fear" the cause of the sublime, instead of one of its possible effects. In like manner he falls into fallacy when, as in the following passage, he speaks of power as a mere accompaniment, and not the operative cause. It is the power which causes the fear, if fear there be; power external to the mind, when perceived and felt by the mind, is the antecedent; fear, if it come at all,

follows after as an ulterior result.

We shall subsequently, however, attempt to show that fear is but an accident; that it may or may not be present; and that, instead thereof, inward mental strength, the counterpart of physical outward power, is, in the noblest minds, the truest accompaniment of the sublime.

"Besides these things," says Burke, "which directly suggest the idea of dan ger and those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing sublime which is not some

modification of power. And this branch rises, as naturally as the other two branches, from terror, the common stock of everything that is sublime. from the terror with which it is gene"That power derives all its sublimity rally accompanied, will appear evidently from its effect in the very few cases in siderable degree of strength of its ability which it may be possible to strip a conto hurt. When you do this, you spoil it of everything sublime, and it immedi ately becomes contemptible."

Now, we readily admit that high mountains, deep abysses-that whatever in nature is greater and more certain terror. Fear is one of the mighty than man, does fill with a effects, but not the highest. Humility in the presence of magnitude, weakness before might, do imply a certain passive endurance of fear, terror, trembling. Yet we believe that no man possessing manly fortitude can duced sense of weakness and humility long abide in this subjection. The inis but the prelude to greater strength. The mountain will communicate to the sympathetic mind a portion of its might-will lead through fellowship to a noble equality with itself. It is only the man of prostrated weakness, constituted for passive endurance, fitted to crawl when he ought to soar, who in the presence of the sublime will fear without hope, suffer without effort, be humble without pride. If mentally oppressed at the mountain base, a manly each upward step the poet-tourist energy will seek the summit. With will gain accession of power. Crossing the mad torrent, pressing onward over rugged rocks, among trees mutilated by storms, he finds with increasmind triumphs with the body; the ing difficulty renewed energy. thoughts dilate with the grandeur of

the scene.

The

The heroic in nature be

Danger gets heroism in enterprise. adds to courage; mind and body are nerved to conquer opposition. Then is understood how patriotism and manly independence belong to mountain homes; how mental action takes on the intensity of natural phenomena; and that a stirring national history of bravery and exploit is indigenous to a land that has passed through vast natural convulsions. We would ask, then, what becomes

of the doctrine that would make fear and trembling the essence of the sublime, when, on the contrary, as we have seen, danger rouses to enterprise and courage the grand in nature begetting the great in man?

The traveller who for a moment trembled at the mountain's base becomes triumphant at its summit. He looks down upon the plains beneath with a sense of victory; his eye stretches far among mountain-summits, and he feels their equal. His feet have borne his mind to a commanding elevation; the horizon of thought is extended with the sweep of vision; the dull level of existence is left beneath, and, placed on the summit of existence, he take a wide clear survey of the fields and tracts of knowledge. He feels humbled, no doubt, in the presence of immensity, yet it is a humility which leads to strength. Conscious that his past life has been wanting in nobility, that his thoughts have been wanting in scale, and have traversed in a low level, he enters on high and strong resolve. Purposes taking their scale from the mountain-masses, their elevation from surrounding heightsemotions profound as the depths, pure as the heavens to which the feet have led-energies for actions intense as nature's forces: these are the mental phenomena generated by the sublime. How totally insufficient and unworthy, then, is the philosophy which would teach that its ultimate elements are pain and pleasure, fear and trembling. Power in outward nature, and corresponding communicated power in man's inner nature, are, as we have shown, if not its only, at least among its highest attributes. The power which raised the mountains, which tore them asunder to make ravines-the power which wars in the elements of earth, air, and water, speaking through the language of jagged bold outline, obtaining expression through vast masses, thrown into vast space-the power which spake and it was done, is in all its goings-forth sublime.

And the sublime in thought is like to the sublime in nature. Its chief essence, as we have said, is power a power which may move mountains, fill up valleys, control the

elements-giant in its dimensions, vast in its sphere of action. Mind and thought may indeed be said to become sublime just as they approach in character to Alpine scenery, as they typify in the world of spirit the forms and aspects which nature assumes in the empire of matter. If, indeed, as before stated, nature be regarded as mind and thought manifested through outward form, the essential unity and corresponding aspects of the sublime, in creation and in man, are once evident. Referring the works of man and the forms and operations of nature to their common origin in the spirit world, the element of the sublime, whether in man or in nature, is thus necessarily one.

We have said that sublimity origi nates chiefly in power; we will now venture to assert still more,—that it takes its rise in God's omnipotence. Just in proportion as power is superhuman and approaches the supernatural, does it become sublime. The power which overturns a mountain, or in an avalanche overwhelms & village-the power of the highest genius in moments of highest manifestation, especially as exalted under actual inspiration are all sublime, just in proportion as they transcend the ordinary forces which work in man and nature, and approach to the infinite power of God's omnipotence. The sublime lies on the threshold of infinity-is lost in the mystery of obscurity-excites our wonder, and demands our worship, as an attribute of God himself. It belongs less to the territory of science, less to the clear cold region of intellectual philosophy, than to the province of religion. Hence sublimity is specially the language of inspiration, and in the Bible becomes the voice of God. Thus in the Book of Job we find such examples as the following: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind." "Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of Him? but the thunder of His power who can understand?" Again, in the 18th Psalm we find the following well-known example of the sublime:

"Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved

and were shaken, because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pa

vilion around about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. At the brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered on the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hailstones and coals of fire."

Assuredly it was in the mountains of the Lebanon that God thus revealed himself. Deity is not so manifested in the plains. The passage might, indeed, be taken as the personification of an Alpine storm, when the earth shakes and trembles, and the hills are moved; when God seems to bow the heavens and come down flying on the wings of the storm, making the swift clouds his chariots, and the thick darkness his pavilion. An Alpine storm is natural religion -this passage from the Psalms revealed a comparison of the two would give the subsisting relations between these diverse aspects of the same divine attributes.

Thus the sublime in nature, in man and in God, is essentially one, an identity of power originating in God, and reflected from him in his works. Thus both man and nature become sublime, just in proportion as they are Godlike, according to the measure in which the finite becomes the abode or manifestation of the infinite. Hence, as we have said before, the sublime is rightly a source of strength, not of weakness; or rather a strength begotten out of weakness, a communicated force and courage which prevent the access of fear. There is, indeed, an unholy fear, which shrinks at the touch of Ithuriel's spear, and dares not look sublimity in the face. The devils tremble; and so likewise men, physically, intellectually, or morally prostrated, tremble, and with fear approach the sublime in thought, form, or deed. It is too strong for their weakness; it is to them a strength antagonistic, not communicative; it comes from above, their weakness from beneath; and having

nothing in common, the one cannot assimilate with the other. It is thus manifest that Burke drew his philosophy from a debased aspect of huthe sublime is an idea belonging to manity. He says, for example, "that self-preservation; that it is therefore that its strongest emotion is an emoone of the most affecting we have; tion of distress." If this be true, the sublime is not the grand, the greatnot the noble and heroic in thought and human action.

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It might perhaps lead to the solution of the difficulties with which Burke's theory becomes involved, were a distinction drawn between "the sublime" and "the terrible." The terrible does truly inspire with terror and fear; and when excessive, occasions "pain" and "distress:" man drawn within its vortex does, in the impending danger, think of “selfpreservation.' In such moments he cannot stop to contemplate, admire, or exclaim "how grand!" for he is constrained to fly for safety. Hence, when terror implies danger, it does involve fear. But when the danger is past, and becomes distant, that which was terrible when too near becomes merely sublime when far off. Thus, man must be sufficiently removed in space, or in time, from the actual enacting of the sublime, otherwise, becoming too intense, the mind is appalled by the terrible, not raised to power by the sublime. Hence the destruction of Jerusalem was to the Jews themselves too terrible to be simply grand; but to us, removed to this secure distance in space and time, the subject becomes, in the hands of Roberts or Kaulbach, softened into a pictorial epic, not too intense for enjoyment. Thus, likewise, in the great day of wrath, when the sixth seal shall be opened when an earthquake shall move the mountains, when the sun shall become black as sackcloth, and the moon as blood, and the stars fall from heaven, and men shall say to the rocks, fall upon us; in that great day of terror, what fear will seize on man! And yet, from our unknown distance of time, Danby has shown that the subject so far loses its terrors as to become pictorially sublime. By the contemplation of such works, power

is communicated, the sphere of thought and being exalted, and man, highly wrought, feels himself capable of noble and heroic action. "Selfpreservation," and selfish, servile motives, sink before a rising enthusiasm, which prompts to emulate that greatness which in the sublime man admires. If the grand in history, the vast in nature, be referred to the government of God-if all power be recognised as of divine origin, then will fear be supplanted by trust and communicated strength. In hours of weakness fear may steal in unawares; but in proportion as man is selfreliant, and yet relying, will he stand before the sublime in history and in nature, and receive from each an accession to his power.

In these well-known lines, by Mr. Bryant, the sublime of Burke is "the quarry-slave," in fear and terror scourged to his dungeon." The true sublime of philosophy and religion is no crouching slave, but a free strong man, "sustained" "by an unfaltering trust.”

We will now say somewhat on the relation in which power of genius stands to power in nature. Man has been called "the microcosm, or a little world-a kind of epitome of the great;" and hence power of genius becomes the microcosm of naturepower, an inward epitome of the power which in nature creates and governs; that power which, as we have seen, specially breaks forth into action among the Alps. We have already said that the Alps are, as it were, works of genius. The earth, for the most part, consists of a utilitarian commonplace, with a poem thrown in by way of exceptional episode. The general surface of the

earth is suited to the general wants of ordinary humanity: it is corn and wine-growing-is content to work humbly and usefully with and for man; and, steadfastly accomplishing the daily ends of existence, it is neither actuated by ambition nor agitated by passion. The tourist through Europe, even when in search of nature's beauties, is compelled to traverse districts, flat and uneventful as the lives of the peasantry by which they are peopled. In Germany he grows weary of whole duchies of commonplace-the complete counterparts of smoking, beer-drinking boors, and purely domestic fraus-diversified with only here and there witnesses to the beautiful as he approaches the Rhine or enters the Saxon Switzerland. In Spain, for days and nights, in the slothful diligence, from Seville or Madrid to Gibraltar, but one Ronda testifies to the sublime. In France the completion of railways happily enables the tra veller at once to rush from north to south on his way to the Pyrenees, or to enter forthwith on the beauties of Italy by the Corniche road. Ordinary nature is like actual life-utilitarian, not transcendental. It condescends, in fertile plains and valleys, to be humble, domestic, and useful, where, blessing and blest, it vegetates in a placid, uneventful enjoyment. But, on the other hand, there are exceptional spots on the earth's surface, which, like the unrest of genius, leave the dead level of existence-scorn to minister, at least directly, to the bodily agricultural wants of man— and, as genius and works of genius, stand apart and aloft, nature becoming the architect, the artist, and the poet, inscribing dramas, painting pictures, or building temples for our worship. Thus, as we have said, the Alps rise as works of genius, the creating hand giving free fling to executive power, nature constituting herself a kind of art-language for the expression of a grand idea. Hence we have ventured to place, as correlative to Alpine power in nature, the power of genius. Genius may be said to represent the divinely instituted laws and powers of the universe. It is the interpreter of those laws, connecting, for example, by the