GRANDEUK AND SUBLIMITY. 375 



with their aid a still deeper effect may be produced on 

 the imagination by spectral illusions than by sounds. 

 And the fact that we are more powerfully affected by 

 shadows than by substances agrees with the well-known 

 power of obscure images in poetry, painting, and romance. 



The emotion of sublimity seems to me to be more 

 simple than that of grandeur, and more allied to solem- 

 nity. A single melancholy note in the silence of a deep 

 forest, or in the solemn stillness and darkness of night, 

 would cause an emotion more like that of sublimity than 

 of grandeur ; and we may note a similar distinction in 

 written compositions. In sublime writings the language 

 is simple ; though the image conveyed to the mind be 

 obscure, the words are plain and few. In passages of 

 grandeur, of which we find many extraordinary examples 

 in the works of John Euskin, there is a rapid enumeration 

 of striking images that produce a dazzling and bewildering 

 effect on the reader's mind, like a vast stream of scintil- 

 lations of many brilliant colors from fireworks. A sub- 

 lime description is generally indebted to a single image 

 for its effects. Poets have often embellished their de- 

 scriptions with supernatural imagery. Hence the sub- 

 limity of many passages in the Old Testament and in 

 Ossian. In almost all cases a certain amount of vagueness 

 or obscurity increases the force of the image. None 

 would deny the sublimity of this passage : " I heard the 

 voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, 

 saying, Alleluia." 



By some writers the profound is placed in opposition to 

 the sublime. This is not their proper relation to each 

 other. The opposite of the sublime is the low and the 

 trivial ; the profound is only a modification of the senti- 

 ment. Sublimity literally refers to great altitude, pro- 

 foundity to great depth. We speak of a sublime height 

 and of a profound abyss ; of a sublime poet and a pro- 



