terms solely to express abstract Perfection, which he allegorized as
the mistress of his mind, to whose exclusive worship his whole life
was devoted. Whether it was the most appropriate term he could have
chosen, we shall not inquire. It is certain, however, that the literal
adoption of it by subsequent writers has been the cause of much
confusion, as well as vagueness.

For ourselves, we are quite at a loss to imagine how a notion so
obviously groundless has ever had a single supporter; for, if a
distinct effect implies a distinct cause, we do not see why distinct
terms should not be employed to express the difference, or how the
legitimate term for one can in any way be applied to signify a
particular degree of the other. Like the two Dromios, they sometimes
require a conjurer to tell which is which. If only Perfection, which
is a generic term implying the summit of all things, be meant,
there is surely nothing to be gained (if we except _intended_
obscurity) by substituting a specific term which is limited to a few.
We speak not here of allegorical or metaphorical propriety, which is
not now the question, but of the literal and didactic; and we may
add, that we have never known but one result from this arbitrary
union,--which is, to procreate words.

In further illustration of our position, it may be well here to notice
one mistaken source of the Sublime, which seems to have been sometimes
resorted to, both in poems and pictures; namely, in the sympathy
excited by excruciating bodily suffering. Suppose a man on the rack
to be placed before us,--perhaps some miserable victim of the
Inquisition; the cracking of his joints is made frightfully audible;
his calamitous "Ah!" goes to our marrow; then the cruel precision
of the mechanical familiar, as he lays bare to the sight his whole