wrought, elude all the senses equally. For the sake of this, their
prime office, the rest is many times forgotten or scorned, the tune
is disordered and havoc played with the lineaments of the picture,
because without these the word can still do its business. The
refutation of those critics who, in their analysis of the power of
literature, make much of music and picture, is contained in the
most moving passages that have found utterance from man. Consider
the intensity of a saying like that of St. Paul:- "For I am
persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord."

Do these verses draw their power from a skilful arrangement of
vowel and consonant? But they are quoted from a translation, and
can be translated otherwise, well or ill or indifferently, without
losing more than a little of their virtue. Do they impress the eye
by opening before it a prospect of vast extent, peopled by vague
shapes? On the contrary, the visual embodiment of the ideas
suggested kills the sense of the passage, by lowering the cope of
the starry heavens to the measure of a poplar-tree. Death and
life, height and depth, are conceived by the apostle, and creation
thrown in like a trinket, only that they may lend emphasis to the
denial that is the soul of his purpose. Other arts can affirm, or
seem to affirm, with all due wealth of circumstance and detail;
they can heighten their affirmation by the modesty of reserve, the
surprises of a studied brevity, and the erasure of all
impertinence; literature alone can deny, and honour the denial with
the last resources of a power that has the universe for its