rain of dust, may be the only thing that moves, or
feels, in all the waste of weary precipice, darkening five thousand feet
of the blue depth of heaven.

Sec. 22. It will not be thought that there is nothing in a scene such as
this deserving our contemplation, or capable of conveying useful
lessons, if it were fitly rendered by art. I cannot myself conceive any
picture more impressive than a faithful rendering of such a cliff would
be, supposing the aim of the artist to be the utmost tone of sad
sublime. I am, nevertheless, aware of no instance in which the slightest
attempt has been made to express their character; the reason being,
partly, the extreme difficulty of the task, partly the want of
temptation in specious color or form. For the majesty of this kind of
cliff depends entirely on its size: a low range of such rock is as
uninteresting as it is ugly; and it is only by making the spectator
understand the enormous scale of their desolation, and the space which
the shadow of their danger oppresses, that any impression can be made
upon his mind. And this scale cannot be expressed by any artifice; the
mountain cannot be made to look large by painting it blue or faint,
otherwise it loses all its ghastliness. It must be painted in its own
near and solemn colors, black and ashen grey; and its size must be
expressed by thorough drawing of its innumerable details--pure
_quantity_,--with certain points of comparison explanatory of the whole.
This is no light task; and, attempted by any man of ordinary genius,
would need steady and careful painting for three or four months; while,
to such a man, there would appear to be nothing worth his toil in the
gloom of the subject, unrelieved as it is even by variety of form; for
the soft rock of which these cliffs are composed rarely breaks into bold
masses; and the gloom of their effect partly depends on its not doing
so.

Sec. 23. Yet, while painters thus reject the natural, and large sublime,
which is ready to their hand, how strangely do they seek after a false
and small sublime. It is not that they reprobate gloom, but they will
only have a gloom of their own making; just as half the world will not
see the terrible and sad truths which the universe is full of, but
surrounds itself with little clouds of sulky and unnecessary fog for its
own special breathing. A portrait is not thought grand unless it has a
thundercloud behind it (as if a hero could not be brave in sunshine); a