or higher faculties of the mind become pleasurably excited, if they be
pushed as it were beyond their supposed limits, till a sense of the
indefinite seems almost to partake of the infinite, to these causes we
affix the epithet _Sublime._ It is needless to inquire if such
an effect can be produced by any thing short of the vast and
overpowering, much less by the gradual approach or successive
accumulation of any number of separate forces. Every one can answer
from his own experience. We may also add, that the pleasure which
belongs to the deeper emotions always trenches on pain; and the sense
of pain leads to reaction; so that, singly roused, they will rise
but to fall, like men at a breach,--leaving a conquest, not over the
living, but the dead. The effect of the Sublime must therefore be
sudden, and to be sudden, simple, scarce seen till felt; coming like
a blast, bending and levelling every thing before it, till it passes
into space. So comes this marvellous emotion; and so vanishes,--to
where no straining of our mortal faculties will ever carry them.

To prevent misapprehension, we may here observe, that, though the
parts be few, it does not necessarily follow that they should always
consist of simple or single objects. This narrow inference has often
led to the error of mistaking mere space for grandeur, especially
with those who have wrought rather from theory than from the true
possession of their subjects. Hence, by the mechanical arrangement
of certain large and sweeping masses of light and shadow, we are
sometimes surprised into a momentary expectation of a sublime
impression, when a nearer approach gives us only the notion of a vast
blank. And the error lies in the misconception of a mass. For a mass
is not a _thing_, but the condition of _things_; into which,
should the subject require it, a legion, a host, may be compressed,
an army with banners,--yet so that they break not the unity of their