erwise than unequal, and that the higher law
should not subordinate the lower. We do not deny that the Beautiful
may, so to speak, mitigate the awful intensity of the Sublime; but it
cannot change its character, much less impart its own; the one will
still be awful, the other, of itself, never.

When at Rome, we once asked a foreigner, who seemed to be talking
somewhat vaguely on the subject, what he understood by the Sublime.
His answer was, "Le plus beau"; making it only a matter of degree. Now
let us only imagine (if we can) a beautiful earthquake, or a beautiful
hurricane. And yet the foreigner is not alone in this. D'Azzara,
the biographer of Mengs, speaking of Beauty, talks of "this sublime
quality," and in another place, for certain reasons assigned, he says,
"The grand style is beautiful." Nay, many writers, otherwise of high
authority, seem to have taken the same view; while others who could
have had no such notion, having used the words Beauty and the
Beautiful in an allegorical or metaphorical sense, have sometimes been
misinterpreted literally. Hence Winckelmann reproaches Michael Angelo
for his continual talk about Beauty, when he showed nothing of it
in his works. But it is very evident that the _Bella_ and
_Bellezza_ of Michael Angelo were never used by him in a literal
sense, nor intended to be so understood by others: he adopted the
terms solely to express abstract Perfection, which he allegorized as
the mistress of his mind, to whose exclusive worship his whole life
was devoted. Whether it was the most appropriate term he could have
chosen, we shall not inquire. It is certain, however, that the literal
adoption of it by subsequent writers has been the cause of much
confusion, as well as vagueness.

For ourselves, we are quite at a loss to imagine how a notion so
obviously groundless has ever had a single supporter; for, if a
distinct effect implies a distinct cause, we do not see why distinct
terms should not be employed to express the difference, or how the
legitimate term for one can in any way be applied to signify a
particular degree of the other. Like the two Dromios, they sometimes
require a conjurer to tell which is which. If only Perfection, which
is a generic term implying the summit of all things, be meant,
there is surely nothing to be gained (if we except _intended_
obscurity) by substituting a specific term which is limited to a few.
We speak not here of allegorical or metaphorical propr