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
the beings of the invisible world are supposed to visit us, they are
immediately connected in the mind with the unknown Infinite; whether
the faith be in the heart or in the imagination; whether they bubble
up from the earth, like the Witches in Macbeth, taking shape at will,
or self-dissolving into air, and no less marvellous, foreknowing
thoughts ere formed in man; or like the Ghost in Hamlet, an
unsubstantial shadow, having the functions of life, motion, will,
and speech; a fearful mystery invests them with a spell not to be
withstood; the bewildered imagination follows like a child, leaving
the finite world for one unknown, till it aches in darkness,
trackless, endless.

Perhaps, as being nearest in station to the unsearchable Author of
all things, the highest example of this would be found in the
Angelic Nature. If it be objected, that the poets have not always so
represented it, it rests with them to show cause why they have not.
Milton, no doubt, could have assigned a sufficient reason in _th