mind. An ironclad is a sublime and noble object while riding at anchor or moving majestically on the sea; not so when two fleets are in action, with their blasting broadsides blazing at each other, when rigging, masts, and men are shot away, when grappling and boarding and bayoneting begins, when the air is filled with the groans of the wounded and the dying, when the sea is strewn with wreckage and uniform, or is bubbling with the gasps of the drowning. No, verily, we cannot say such sights are sublime; they are perfectly fearful.

Again, a battle expected to come off, especially if we have any stake in the issue-and we have all some stake in the lives of our fellow-creatures-is in no way sublime; we are filled with alternate anticipations of victory and defeat, of confidence and misgivings; hopes and apprehensions chase each other through the mind like the northern lights; we are torn within by perplexing thoughts and contending emotions; our mind itself is a battlefield till the result be known. Even a victory recently gained will not present unmixed sublimity; while the widow's mourning is noticed, and the orphan's loss is known, while the vacant chair is seen, and the household head is missed, there will be other qualities besides sublimity in the event, other emotions besides awe in the mind. Far otherwise is it with a battle of antiquity, when every wound has been healed, every gap filled, every loss repaired. We can pass Thermopyla without a shudder, we can stand on Marathon without grief, knowing that the sorrow and the pain are past, and the great result alone remains; thinking only of the heroes in their graves below, and of the immortal work they accomplished, of the great repulse of fate effected on that field, of the titledeeds of liberty enfolded in that soil, and of the long and widening difference of destiny which many a nation traces to that plain-indulging in these meditations, we are filled with unadulterated awe.

Again, distant thunder is sublime because it is always

suggestive and never dangerous. Very close overhead, however, we associate it so much with the lightning flash and its dire destructiveness, that it becomes more or less dreadful. It is similar with regard to lightning. In the distance, over mountains, forests, deserts, or seas, lightning may be very sublime; not so, however, if it should strike a tree before our eyes or kill a comrade at our side. A storm at sea is sublime when we watch it from a place of safety: the enormous power to harm and overwhelm which the waves suggest, but do not exercise, calls up the awe of the beholder. If, however, we should discern a ship in danger or see it dashed to pieces on a rock-the cargo flung about the beach, and the mangled bodies of the seamen hurled against the cliffs, and wedged amongst the fissures-æsthetic feelings must retire and more harassing emotions succeed. How different this last picture from the sublimely suggestive power of water discovered in Niagara on a pleasant summer day. A tall and beetling precipice is sublime; it suggests strength and age, height, and danger, and death; but being only passive, it does no more than suggest; it does not assert, until we see some one on the summit lose his balance and fall headlong into the abyss; then we connect the cliff's power with the accident; we father the calamity on the height, and treat the object as we did the thunder.

Again, the sun is very sublime as it rises in the east and travels over heaven's plain with noiseless tread, dispensing light and heat to all the world, showering blessings on the wicked and on the wise, unrealisable in its distance, its weight, and its magnitude, unfathomable in its influence, irresistible in its movement, and steadfast in its progress. On the scorching deserts of Arabia or the arid sands of Africa, where its unmitigated fury dries up the water, burns the herbage, drives men under cover, weakens and exhausts the frame, or smiting the incautious traveller with its beams, shatters his intellect and constitution, the same sun is anything but sublime.

Let us advance a step higher, and examine some objects practically possessing no innate, but a great deal of suggested power; and here we shall reach a class of things. impressing us with more unalloyed sublimity, and inspiring us with more unfeigned awe, than the doubtful or fluctuating examples we have hitherto considered. In this department of the subject there is one species of suggested power deserving of a special consideration, I mean the power we attribute to design. Whenever we see a rational result, rightly or wrongly we infer a rational cause; and when we see a highly complex but intelligible effect, we conclude a highly complex but intelligent design; and comparing the visible result with the inferred design, we are filled with awe at the power that could so marvellously conceive and so effectually execute. And more than this, when we recognise the same results in part we infer the same design in whole, and thus despise the impotence which betrayed the workman, allowing him the faculties to intend, but leaving him without the ability to perform. Whether in these deductive excursions our conclusions are metaphysically correct or not, it does not signify at all; whether the power we recognise in an object or the design we draw from it is directly due to an intelligent author, to an immutable law, or to the constitution of our own understandings, makes really no difference. We know that the phenomena are there; and though we admit to reason that we did not cause them, yet the more we acquaint ourselves with the phenomena, the more we exercise our intellect upon the matter, and the more we unravel the design, so much the more satisfied we become, and so much the more prone to connect ourselves with the authorship and finisher of the whole process. This is all that it is necessary for us to know or believe, in order to create sublimity or experience awe.

Now one great branch of design is expressed in what is termed organism, and whenever we concentrate our attention upon an organism—even though the object sustaining

it be mean and ugly-we become cognisant of a certain amount of sublimity. The dead carcase of a dog may reveal marvels of organism, of which we had before no conception; it may tell us of designs lofty and unfathomable, and of execution unapproachably perfect. Had we nothing else on which to bestow our attention, the structure of cobwebs, the organisms of reptiles, the form and habits of vermin, would infallibly furnish us with sublimity and touch us with awe. Observe the elevated associations of human sympathy and affection which Byron makes the prisoner of Chillon bestow on mice and spiders, on the walls of his lonely dungeon, and on the very fetters that bound himself. A weed beside a flower may be ugly or mean; yet if we confine our attention to its organic structure, we shall find it neither disgusting nor contemptible, but not a little sublime. A dandelion may possess an organism of matchless symmetry and astonishing workmanship,-the tubes, the cells, the fibres, the root, the stem, the blossom and the leaves, with their various systems of physiology, nutrition, assimilation, absorption, transpiration, respiration, germination, fertilisation, efflorescence,-all bespeak a depth of design and a power of execution which throw us back upon our own minds for a solution of the mystery. Having accepted a solution, we maintain it in preference to all others, and give ourselves credit both for the ingenuity of the plan we have discovered and the perfection of the performance which we recognise. Half the value and effect of painting and engraving arises from this source. As soon as we have come to the conclusion that the artist had intended to portray a human being, we have caught the design; and having satisfied ourselves that his efforts seconded or failed to second his intention, or, in other words, that the author had sufficient or insufficient power to perform what he had intended, we regard the result as sublime or contemptible. The same remarks apply to sculpture and to all works of art. Great discoveries are sublime according

to the amount of power they suggest; those which seem to be the fulfilment of a preconcerted plan, whether in philosophy, science, art, war, or exploration, will be most sublime; and those which look like the result of accident, mistake, or chance, will not be at all sublime. There would be very little sublimity in the discovery of America by Columbus had the great traveller been driven westward by misadventure and with no anticipations of such a glorious issue. Great poems, speeches, literary and musical compositions, are all sublime upon the same principlethe suggestion of power in following out a preconceived intention; for we believe that none of these works can be achieved by chance. The design, of course, must be understood, or in some manner appreciated, before the workmanship can appear sublime, just as the utility must be apprehended before the object can appear beautiful.

Hitherto, it will be noticed, no special attention has been devoted to sound as an object of beauty or sublimity. Sound is a sensation, and, like colour, shape, odour, flavour, and every other sensation, may be pleasant or unpleasant. Sound, like colour and shape, is caused by vibrations. The vibration of a tuning-fork, for instance, sets the air undulating, and these undulations striking on the tympanum cause sound in the mind. The air is capable of great diversity of vibration both as regards pitch, tone, and intensity; and when these qualities combine in one series of vibrations, the effect on the mind will be proportionately complex. If the various parts of any series of vibrations, or the various series of any system of vibrations, agree, combine, or coalesce, the effect upon the tympanum and auditory nerve will be pleasant; and if they disagree, repel, or contradict each other, the effect will be unpleasant. Sharp and abrupt vibrations are, irrespective of tone and intensity, less grateful than regular or uniform ones; and thus sound, as a sensation, is readily explicable on the same principle as that which we have applied to

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