Explanation. -A man of feeble abilities, though describing the most awful or the most stupendous object in nature, may yet not have the natural elevation of soul which will lead him to notice what is really grand in the object. He must have something grand in himself in order to conceive rightly of what is grand in other things. It is not in rules to give this ability. It is the gift of God. No one can write sublimely, even on a sublime subject, unless he has by nature a certain greatness of soul.

Napoleon in Egypt, wishing to inspire his army with enthusiasm for the battle, pointed to the Pyramids, and said: "Thirty centuries are looking down upon you!" No one who was not himself of heroic mould would have thus conceived or spoken of those hoary monuments of antiquity.

A thunder-storm at night among the mountains is a spectacle of terrible sublimity. But a description of it, even if accurate in all its particulars, would not necessarily be sublime. The writer must know how to seize strongly upon those few grand features which constitute its sublimity. None but a poet of high genius could have conceived of it as Byron has done:

How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,

And the big rain comes dancing to the earth!

And now again 'tis black-and now the glee

Of the loud hill shakes with its mountain mirth,

As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth.

3. Suppression of Belittling Details. A third condition to sublimity in discourse is that the author knows what par ticulars to omit, as well as what to insert.

Example from Milton. — There are, even about the grandest objects, many details which are belittling. Milton, in his battle of the angels, describes them as tearing up the mountains and throwing them at one another:

From their foundations loos'ning to and fro,

They plucked the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods; and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting, bore them in their hands.

Here no circumstance is mentioned which is not sublime.

Claudian. One of the ancient poets, Claudian, in describing a similar scene in the wars of the giants, adds a circumstance which makes the whole thing ridiculous. He represents one of the giants with Mount Ida upon his shoulders, and a river, which flowed from the mountain, running down along the giant's back.

Virgil. So great a poet as Virgil has made a like mistake in describing an eruption of Mount Etna. Personifying the mountain, he describes it under the degrading image of a drunken man "belching up its bowels with a groan," (eructans viscera cum gemitu).

Blackmore. Sir Richard Blackmore, by a singular perversity of taste, seized upon this idea as the capital circumstance in his description, and, as one of his critics observes, represents the mountain as in a fit of the cholic.

Etna, and all the burning mountains, fired

Their kindled stores with inbred storms of wind
Blown up to rage, and roaring out complain,
As torn with inward gripes, and torturing pain;
Laboring, they cast their dreadful vomit round,
And with their melted bowels spread the ground.

4. Simplicity and Conciseness of Expression. A fourth condition of sublimity in writing is that the expression be simple and concise.

Explanation. Simplicity is here used in opposition to profuse and studied ornament, and conciseness to superfluous expression. In all the celebrated examples of the sublime which literature affords, the words used are comparatively plain and few. The sublimity is in the thought, and that is all the more impressive for stand-` ing, like the Pyramids, in simple and unadorned grandeur.

Longinus, a learned Greek of the third century, quotes, as an instance of the sublime, the manner in which Moses, in the first chapter of Genesis, describes the creation of light: "God said, Let there be light, and there was light;" yet the expression is perfectly plain and simple, without ornament, and without a superfluous word. The grandeur of the passage consists in the strong impression it gives us of the greatness of the divine power, which produces such wonderful effects by merely speaking a word.

The Sublimity of the Gospels. - Many of the sayings and most of the miracles of our Lord, as recorded in the Gospels, have the same characteristic. They are expressed with the utmost simplicity and

plainness, and yet they are in the highest degree sublime. The most stupendous miracles are described with a simple majesty fully equal to that in Genesis which extorted such admiration from Longinus.

Examples.-In describing the greatest of all his miracles, that of raising from the dead, the record is simply, "Jesus said, Lazarus, come forth: and he that was dead came forth." In healing the worst form of disease then known, he merely said to the leprous man, "Be thou clean: and immediately his leprosy was cleansed." When the disciples were in peril at sea, more terrifying than that which daunted Cæsar's pilot, Jesus with calm serenity said, "It is I, be not afraid." His claims to authority, as a teacher come from God, are put forth in few and simple words, but at the same time with a majesty of expression that forced even his enemies to say, 'never man spake like this man."

Character of these Utterances. These utterances are either simply blasphemous in their arrogance, or they are in the highest degree sublime. Imagine any other man that ever lived, saying to the countless tribes of affliction, in all the ends of the earth, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." "Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me." "Before Abraham was, I am." "In this place is one greater than the temple." "The son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Improving upon the Sublime. If we take any of the examples which have been given, and endeavor to improve upon them, by piling up big words and sounding epithets, and by going into various small details, we soon find that the sublimity has all disappeared. The transaction or the thought may still be grand; but our expression of it is poor and commonplace. A second-rate poet has thus dilated upon Cæsar's celebrated phrase, Quid times? Cæsarem vehis. ("What do you fear? You carry Cæsar.")

"But Cæsar, still superior to distress,
Fearless, and confident of sure success,
Thus to the pilot loud: The seas despise,
And the vain threat'ning of the noisy skies;
Though gods deny thee yon Ausonian strand,
Yet go, I charge you, go, at my command.
Thy ignorance alone can cause thy fears,
Thou know'st not what a freight thy vessel bears;
Thou know'st not I am he to whom 'tis given,
Never to want the care of watchful heaven.
Obedient fortune waits my humble thrall,

And always ready, comes before I call.

Let winds and seas, loud wars at freedom wage,
And waste upon themselves their empty rage;

A stronger, mightier daimon is thy friend,
Thou and thy bark on Cæsar's fate depend.
Thou stand'st amazed to view this dreadful scene,
And wonder'st what the gods and fortune mean;
But artfully their bounties thus they raise,
And from my danger arrogate new praise;
Amid the fears of death they bid me live,

And still enhance what they are sure to give."

II. BEAUTY.

Mode of Treatment. The treatment of Beauty as a quality of style must be, in some respects, similar to our treatment of Sublimity. We will speak first of Beauty in general, and then of Rhetorical beauty, or beauty in Composition.

I. BEAUTY IN GENERAL.

Relation of Beauty to Sublimity. - Beauty, next to Sublimity, affords the highest pleasure to the taste. The emotion which it raises, however, is very distinguishable from that of sublimity. It is of a calmer kind; more gentle and soothing; does not elevate the mind so much, but, on the contrary, produces an agreeable serenity. Sublimity raises a feeling too violent to be lasting; the pleasure arising from beauty admits of longer continuance. It extends also to a much greater variety of objects. It is applied indeed to almost every external object that pleases either the eye, or the ear; to many dispositions of the mind; to numerous objects of mere abstract science; and to nearly all the graces of writing. We talk currently of a beautiful tree or flower; a beautiful character; a beautiful theorem in mathematics; a beautiful poem or essay. The qualities which produce in us the emotion of beauty may mostly be reduced under the following heads:

1. Color.-Color affords the simplest instance of beauty. The eye is so formed that certain colors give us pleasure, and these colors we call beautiful.

How far Influenced by Association. In some cases, probably, the pleasure derived from color is influenced by the association of ideas. Green, for instance, is more pleasing, because associated with rural scenes; blue, with the serenity of the sky; white, with innocence. Persons differ too in their choice of colors, and in the extent to which color itself gives them pleasure. But, notwithstanding this,

the fact still remains that color alone, apart from all associations, is a source of beauty.

Evidence of God's Goodness. It is a striking evidence of the goodness of the Creator, that a source of pleasure so pure and elevating is at the same time so abundant. The whole visible creation, animate and inanimate, is a picture gallery, replete with specimens of coloring such as no art of man can equal, either for richness or for delicacy. There is no shade or tint in which the eye of man takes delight, that may not be found in its perfection in the plumage of the birds, the leaves of plants and flowers, the varied hues of the morning and evening sky, the wondrous shells of the ocean, the still more wondrous gems from the mine.

2. Figure. Figure, as a source of beauty, is more complex and diversified than color. The beauty which can be traced to figure, is made up of several elements, which may be separated in idea.

Regularity. The first of these elements is regularity. By a regular figure is meant one which we perceive to be formed according to some rule, and not left arbitrary and loose in the arrangement of its parts. Thus a square, a triangle, a circle, an ellipse are regular figures, and on the proper occasions please the eye by this regularity, and are, for that reason, accounted beautiful.

Variety. Another element, in the beauty which is dependent upon figure, is exactly the opposite to that just named. I mean variety. This latter is indeed a much more prolific source of beauty than the former. Both in the works of nature, and in those works of art which are intended to please, while regularity of figure is sufficiently observed to prevent confusion, and to show design, yet a certain graceful variety is the prevailing characteristic.

Each when Pleasing. - Exact mathematical figures, indeed, are seldom, perhaps never, pleasing, except when associated with the idea of fitness for some particular use. The doors and windows of a house are made after a regular form, with exact proportion of parts; and being so formed, they please the eye, because by this very regularity of figure they better subserve the use for which they were designed. But the plants and flowers which surround the house have an almost infinite diversity and variety of figure, and please us all the more for being so formed, instead of growing in squares, circles, and polygons.