n a Part and a Mass is, that a Mass may include,
_per se_, many Parts, yet, in relation to a Whole, is no more
than a single component. Perhaps the same distinction may be more
simply expressed, if we define it as only a larger division, including
several _parts_, which may be said to be analogous to what is
termed the detail of a _Part_. Look at the ocean in a storm,--at
that single wave. How it grows before us, building up its waters as
with conscious life, till its huge head overlooks the mast! A million
of lines intersect its surface, a myriad of bubbles fleck it with
light; yet its terrible unity remains unbroken. Not a bubble or a line
gives a thought of minuteness; they flash and flit, ere the eye can
count them, leaving only their aggregate, in the indefinite sense
of multitudinous motion: take them away, and you take from the
_mass_ the very sign of its power, that fearful impetus which
makes it what it is,--a moving mountain of water.

We have thus endeavoured, in the opposite characters of the Sublime
and the Gay or Magnificent, to exhibit the two extremes of Variety; of
the intermediate degrees it is unnecessary to speak, since in these
two is included all that is applicable to the rest.

Though it is of vital importance to every composition that there be
variety of Lines, little can be said on the subject in addition to
what has been advanced in relation to parts, that is, to shape and
quantity; both having a common origin. By a line in Composition is
meant something very different from the geometrical definition.
Originally, it was no doubt used as a metaphor; but the needs of
Art have long since converted this, and many other words of like
application, (as _tone_, &c.,) into technical terms. _Line_
thus signifies the course or medium through which the eye is led from
one part of the picture to another. The indication of this course is
various and multiform, appertaining equally to shape, to color, and to
light and dark; in a word, to whatever attracts and keeps the eye in
motion. For the regulation of these lines there is no rule absolute,
except that they vary and unite; nor is the last strictly necessary,
it being sufficient if they so terminate that the transition from one
to another is made naturally, and without effort, by the imagination.
Nor can any laws be laid down as to their peculiar character: this
must depend on the nature of the subject.

In the wild and stormy scenes of Salvator Rosa, th