OF THE SUBLIME.

It may perhaps be wondered that in the division we have made of our
subject, we have taken no notice of the sublime in art, and that in our
explanation of that division we have not once used the word.

Sec. 1. Sublimity is the effect upon the mind of anything above it.

The fact is, that sublimity is not a specific term,--not a term
descriptive of the effect of a particular class of ideas. Anything which
elevates the mind is sublime, and elevation of mind is produced by the
contemplation of greatness of any kind; but chiefly, of course, by the
greatness of the noblest things. Sublimity is, therefore, only another
word for the effect of greatness upon the feelings. Greatness of matter,
space, power, virtue, or beauty, are thus all sublime; and there is
perhaps no desirable quality of a work of art, which in its perfection
is not, in some way or degree, sublime.

Sec. 2. Burke's theory of the nature of the sublime incorrect, and why.

Sec. 3. Danger is sublime, but not the fear of it.

Sec. 4. The highest beauty is sublime.

Sec. 5. And generally whatever elevates the mind.

I am fully prepared to allow of much ingenuity in Burke's theory of the
sublime, as connected with self-preservation. There are few things so
great as death; and there is perhaps nothing which banishes all
littleness of thought and feeling in an equal degree with its
contemplation. Everything, therefore, which in any way points to it,
and, therefore, most dangers and powers over which we have little
control, are in some degree sublime. But it is not the fear, observe,
but the contemplation of death; not the instinctive shudder and struggle
of self-preservation, but the deliberate measurement of the doom, which
are really great or sublime in feeling. It is not while we shrink, but
while we defy, that we receive or convey the highest conceptions of the
fate. There is no sublimity in the agony of terror. Whether do we trace
it most in the cry to the mountains, "fall on us," and to the hills,
"cover us," or in the calmness of the prophecy--"And though after my
skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God?" A little
reflection will easily convince any one, that so far from the feelings
of self-preservation being necessary to the sublime, their greatest
action is totally destructive of it; and that there are few feelings
less capable of its perception than those of a coward. But the simple
conception o