proposed chs. ii. and iii. of this section ("Of Truth" and "Of Size in its effect on the Sublime") no materials have been found. It appears that he afterwards meant to omit ch. ii., or to run the subject into ch. i., for the chapter treating "Of Breadth in its influence on the Sublime" begins with referring to Breadth as "the first of the qualities of form which we mentioned as productive of the Sublime." The question of Size was included in the discussion of Breadth, but this chapter is not in a sufficiently complete form for citation. A similar remark applies to the notes for the next chapter, “Of Energy as an element of the Sublime," and " Of Mystery as productive of the Sublime." In the chapter "Of the Supernatural as an element of the Sublime," there is this passage on plants and flowers :—

[6.] “The wildness and worn colour of their decayed masses,—the living curves of their healthy growth,-the singular sympathies with human life and human suffering which they seem to show, are instruments by which the imagination may be strongly struck. Their shudder at the approach of storm,-their apparent rejoicing in the light and colour of heaven,-their contorted and writhing struggles in decay, are all suggestive of supernatural influence-supernatural because though, as before shown, we constantly endow plants with an inherent felicity or suffering, we endow them not with a knowledge of, or sympathy with, any external events. All appearance, therefore, of such sympathy is a sign to us of some superior power-influencing and binding together under its own mighty operation, essences the most different and apathetic. The sympathy therefore of landscape with the event represented as taking place in it, is not merely-as is commonly said, in good taste; it is not the representation of an agreeable accident, but of that which we all imagine, if not believe-the address of supernatural powers to us through insentient things; and the working together of landscape element to excite some strong ruling emotion in the human mind is always as distinctly suggestive, according to its degree, of supernatural power, as the Darkness until the ninth hour during the Crucifixion. It is not merely a demand of art, that all objects in the picture should be so harmonized as to enhance each other's expression. If this be done throughout, a sense of more than mere harmony is obtained; a sense that such harmony could not result, among insentient beings, unless by the appearance of superior sympathies and over-ruling powers; and that the scene represented is one in which more than human energies and authorities are present.

"Nor is this feeling perhaps even wanting under the ordinary changes of skies and seasons. All the necessary effects, beneficial or destructive, of storm, might be produced-so far as we know-without those circumstances of terror which touch the feelings so strongly. Rain might be given without gloom, the tempest might be guided to its work without giving to the wind that fitful action-that wailing cry-which sways and awakes by quick sympathy human passion and human fear. The lightning might be pointed to its work without the luridness of the heaven or the spectral building and accumulated horror of the thunder-cloud. But it is not so ordained, and with every

"Luridness is the minor key of light; it has the same melancholy or awful effect on the mind which is found in the minor scale of music" (note in author's MS.).

manifestation of destruction or overwhelming power, there are addressed to the senses such accompanying phenomena of sublime form and sound and colour that the mind instantly traces some ruling sympathy that conquers the apathy of the elements, and feels through the inanimation of nature the supernatural unity of God."

Notes follow for the further contents of this proposed chapter. Some of the points were afterwards made in the printed chapters on Imagination.

Of the proposed sections v. and vi. in the original Synopsis, only some few fragmentary passages appear to have been written.

A large quantity of interesting matter exists on the subject of Awe. Much of it is in finished form, though connecting links are sometimes missing. It is difficult to say what the author's intention here was. Several pages in the MS. give different headings. It seems from one of these1 that the chapter or chapters were first intended for the section on the Sublime in the original Synopsis. But some at least of this discussion must have been written at a much later date, for there is a reference in it to vol. iii. of Modern Painters. Whether this chapter on Awe was intended for some revised version of vol. ii., or for a later volume, does not appear. Some of the points and phrases were afterwards used in vols. ii., iv., and v.; compare, for instance, on Awe, as here discussed, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. xiv. § 26; and with the love of horror, vol. iv. ch. xix. ("The Mountain Gloom") § 15, 16. In this unpublished chapter Ruskin appears to have begun by describing cases of morbid love of horrorsuch as delight in diseased conditions of living bodies:

[7.] "The painters and writers who desire to excite horror do it (more frequently and easily than by any other expedient) by imagining life to exist in forms and states of body more or less subjected to visible decay as in the skeleton dances of Retsch 2 and other such works. A 'horrible' death is one in which the laws of life are violently and unnaturally interrupted with such infliction of pain as nature usually forbids as in the body's being torn or dashed to pieces-or burnt; the protraction of the pain and of the unnatural conditions increasing the horror. And 'horrible' places are those which give the idea of, or which more or less threaten, such unnatural death or pain-as gulphs of water among jagged rocks;-pits full of foulness and without hope of escape; and such like, of which more presently. (Then afterwards all foulness, properly so called, is nothing more than a condition of corruption; and is disgusting to us in proportion to the manifestation of its nature the presence of it adds greatly to other forms of horribleness; and the entire absence of it, and of darkness, render horror almost impossible. A mountain torrent flows into the Lago Maggiore about six miles above Locarno,3 between rocks of the hardest white gneiss, which it has worn into broad concave surfaces as smooth as silk. The rocks rise seventy or eighty feet above the stream, which flows beneath the concave wall in narrow gulphs of green, touching the rocks with slight, hardly visible eddies, entirely without sound, and [The sheet is headed "Fear and Horror of the elements of the Sublime."] 2 [For another reference to Retsch, see above, sec. ii. ch. iii. § 12, p. 259.]

3 [Ruskin probably refers to the passage of the Maggia at Ponte Brolla, which however is not more than three miles from Locarno.]

thirty or forty feet deep;-just like so much deep green glass of perfect purity flowing between upright walls of agate. Though the stream issues from the chasm below with no very violent fall, and I suppose a good swimmer might easily extricate himself from the place, or even take delight in bathing there; any more hopeless pools for a person to fall into who could not swim, it would be difficult to imagine; yet the perfect purity of the water, and smooth whiteness of the rocks, take away from them nearly all horror; a dark mill stream under a large wheel is far more terrific.

"The violation of natural law, most horrible when it is supposed to be continuous, for then it is of course the profoundest and intensest violation; corruption tending to its own proper end and close, being in the present state of the world itself natural, is less horrible than a maintained and enduring corruption. Hence it is not merely the idea of life given to the spectre or monster, but the idea of its continuance in the monstrous state, which makes it peculiarly horrible; and when to this idea of continuance is added that of power for evil, the horror reaches its climax : as in the Frankenstein monster; and in the conception of ghouls, vampires, and other such beings.

"Disgust, properly so-called, is a minor degree of horror felt respecting things ignobly painful or offensive; it is much concerned with minor conditions of corruption affecting the touch, taste, and smell; and with the conceptions of each. It passes gradually into higher forms of horror.

"Both horror and disgust are felt occasionally towards creatures which in reality violate no natural law; but which violate in a striking degree the laws of our own human nature. It is to be noted, that when the animal seems to have no resemblance or relation to humanity, but has a nature which cannot be conceived of by us, we are not disgusted with it; but when it has members, of which the service is like the service of our own, yet arranged in some very inhuman way, it disgusts us. We have no objection to an oyster for having no legs at all, but great objection to a centipede for having more legs than we think it ought. Foulness, either of body or habit, as in flies, beetles, and caterpillars; undue and deathlike sluggishness, as in some lizards; unnatural and as it were mechanical animation, as in serpents (of which the most horrible by far is the cerastes which goes sideways); and power of doing strange and painful harm are the other principal elements of disgust or horror in animals, as the reader may easily discover by a little careful thought."

Is there then the author seems to have gone on to inquire—no legitimate place for the horrible? has the sublime no connection with the terrible? He pursues the inquiry by statements of the effect of various sensations of horror upon the individual character:

[8.] "The first broad aspect of the matter appears to be that terrible images have no attractive power whatever over persons leading pure, benevolent, and wise lives; occupied as such lives must be with frequent and happy thoughts of another world. Thus throughout the works of the best religious painters, of whom Fra Angelico may be taken as the type, there cannot be found the smallest trace of sympathy with terror: there are no grand forms of clouds or crags-no effects

of gloom-no conceptions of ghastly form. When the nature of the subject compels them to make an effort in that direction of terror, they are so incapable of feeling it that they always end in a kind of burlesque. Angelico seems utterly unable to conceive a disagreeable expression; his demons are simply ludicrous; and his flames of the Inferno, like pretty patterns in flame-coloured taffeta. Orcagna, and the other more general and naturalistic painters of the religious schools, reach the length of being able to express rage-malice, pride, and other demoniacal passions, by firm, intellectual drawing: they arrange the teeth of their demons in good order for biting, give grisly sweep to their wings, and good holding to their claws; but of real awfulness or horror involved with mystery they never give the slightest hint or passage. Then the great naturalist painters, able to do and to conceive everything, touch chords of terror here and there; just enough to show that they could do more if they liked;-but none of the greatest ones ever give anything entirely terrible-entirely disagreeable as Titian in his anatomies they become sometimes-but no quantity of the disagreeable ever frightens them-or makes them seem to think that others will be frightened. And then, thirdly, the base and vicious painters, of whom Salvator stands far ahead the basest-unapproachably and inexpressibly detestable-a very abyss of abomination 2 these as a class-and Salvator chiefly as representative of them, are attracted by terror-and skilful in arousing it in others.

"That I say is the first aspect of the thing, leading us to suppose that enjoyment of terrible things must be wholly wrong. Next:-let us take the second aspect of it: Observing the conduct and tastes of men in the living world-we shall see thoughtless and frivolous persons for the most part enjoying a trim, well ordered, and entirely unfrightful kind of scenery or abode;-and thoughtful, sensitive, or capacious people apt to like wild and terrible scenes :—at least for a certain time. We shall find the common kind of people content with Cheltenham or Brighton on the whole happiest there-while Walter Scott rejoices in Loch Coriskin-Wordsworth in Borrowdale-Byron in all imaginable kinds of wild places; and most of our more powerful literary or scientific men-more or less in scenery of the same kind. Among boys, young people especially, it is a promising sign if they like to haunt lonely or wild places, and an unpromising one if they only like fine rooms and gay gardens. I believe the solution of the difficulty is to be found in the following general principles, which I shall first briefly state and then expand :

"1. A thoughtful and sensitive person is originally capable of a pleasure in terrible objects, which a thoughtless and dull one is incapable of.

"2. If these persons are uninfluenced by moral principles, and yield to their love of excitement, they may continue to indulge in such pleasurable sensations at wrong times; to the general disturbance of their intellect and degradation of their character.

"And if at the same time they conduct themselves viciously they will become both more capable of horror, and gradually infected with a

1 [See above, pp. 159, 201, 319 n.]

2 [See above, pp. 213, 265.]

morbid love of it; and may, in proportion to the abuse of their gifts, sink far below persons originally of less capacity.

"3. If such persons devote themselves to active, healthy, and honest life, without any special religious principles their sense of terror will occupy a duly subordinate place, among other natural and human sensations: but will, as they advance in life, generally diminish, and yield much of its place to a pure love of facts and of beauty.

4. But if they devote themselves to a life of specially religious sentiment or exertion, such a life generally interfering with many worldly or in religious language-carnal-sensations and checking the pursuit of knowledge in various directions, will ultimately in most cases utterly quench the delight in terror, as well as in the more sensual forms of beauty, and leave the person narrowly minded but finely tempered: incapable of much that others can do and feel; but capable also of some things which few could do but themselves.

"5. Throughout all these phases of change the person originally capable of delight in terror remains for ever distinct from the commonplace person, originally incapable of it. The work of such commonplace persons may often be good in other directions, but the absence of the capacity of awe marks them as everlastingly of an inferior caste." The author then passed to discuss and elaborate these five propositions in order, but the inquiry was not carried further, in this draft, than proposition (2) :

[9.] "A thoughtful and sensitive person is originally capable of a pleasure in terrible objects which inferior persons are incapable of.

"And this is by reason of the general nature of Awe, properly socalled. It is the apprehension of power superior to our own, and of the great perpetual operations of death and pain in the system of the universe-both which perceptions (i.e. of greater power than our own, and of the offices of death and sorrow) are either impossible, or so far as possible, repulsive to a mean mind; but both possible, and in a certain kind attractive, to a great one. The mere capacity of estimate and of measurement is the first quality of the man necessary to such a sensation; -a thoughtless and commonly-minded person can form no idea of the strength of a sea wave, and no estimate of the bulk of a rock; still less of the multitudes of waves that are necessarily connected with the existence of the first or of the forces necessary to place or maintain the rock in its visible form. The universe manifests itself to them in general merely as it affects their sensations; they are drenched by the wave, or run against the rock, and apprehend in consequence, the moisture of the one, and the hardness of the other; they conceive nothing more concerning them, so far as they can go beyond this, and apprehend the power or nature of things; they dislike the resultant humiliation and sense of their own powerlessness or littleness, and shrink from the objects causing it to those over which they have greater power, and which will not make them feel themselves little people. But your noble person particularly enjoys being made to feel himself little; the sense of diminution is to him one of great ecstasy; he laughs with delight as he apprehends his own atomical character, and begins to feel what a mighty system is all about him, and what a