the understanding. We feel ourselves, as it were, lifted from the earth,
and look upon the outward objects that have so affected us, yet learn
not how; and the mystery deepens as we compare them with other objects
from which have followed the same effects, and find no resemblance. For
instance; the roar of the ocean, and the intricate unity of a Gothic
cathedral, whose beginning and end are alike intangible, while its
climbing tower seems visibly even to rise to the Idea which it strives
to embody,--these have nothing in common,--hardly two things could be
named that are more unlike; yet in relation to man they have but one
end: for who can hear the ocean when breathing in wrath, and limit it in
his mind, though he think not of Him who gives it voice? or ascend that
spire without feeling his faculties vanish, as it were with its
vanishing point, into the abyss of space? If there be a difference in
the effect from these and other objects, it is only in the intensity,
the degree of impetus given; as between that from the sudden explosion
of a volcano and from the slow and heavy movement of a rising
thunder-cloud; its character and its office are the same,--in its awful
harmony to connect the created with its Infinite Cause.

But let us compare this effect with that from Beauty. Would the
Parthenon, for instance, with its beautiful forms,--made still more
beautiful under its native sky,--seeming almost endued with the breath
of life, as if its conscious purple were a living suffusion brought
forth in sympathy by the enamoured blushes of a Grecian sunset;--would
this beautiful object even then elevate the soul above its own roof?
No: we should be filled with a pure delight,--but with no longing to
rise still higher. It would satisfy us; which the sublime does not;
for the feeling is too vast to be circumscribed by human content.

On the supernatural it is needless to enlarge; for, in whatever form