GKANDEUK AND SUBLIMITY. 



MANY of our most agreeable emotions are but modifica- 

 tions of a painful sensation ; and in this respect there is 

 a remarkable analogy between our mental and our phys- 

 ical being. While a small portion of certain substances 

 will act agreeably and healthfully upon the organs of 

 taste and assimilation, an excess would be offensive and 

 perhaps fatal. Light, the source of all visual pleasure, 

 would in a certain excess produce blindness ; and circum- 

 stances that excite terror may, when combined with a 

 consciousness of security, awaken the agreeable emotion 

 of sublimity. Such are the effects produced by the 

 sound of thunder at a great distance ; but when it is 

 crashing directly over our heads, the feeling of sublimity 

 is changed to that of terror. In like manner, the intense 

 grief we feel from the death of a friend, when partially 

 subdued by time, becomes modified into an agreeable 

 sentiment of reverence for the dead ; and though the 

 passion of anger is painful, that mollified anger which is 

 termed indignation becomes pleasant by stimulating the 

 mind with healthful resolutions. 



The sentiment of grandeur seems to me to differ very 

 considerably from that of sublimity, inasmuch as the one 

 is a modification of agreeable and the other of painful 

 sensations. I have remarked in another essay that a 

 certain number of figures harmoniously arranged awaken 

 the emotion of beauty. If these images, especially if 

 they are brilliant, should be infinitely multiplied, their 

 excessive multiplication exalts our sense of beauty to 



