It stood still_, but I could not discern the form thereof; _an image was before mine eyes; there was silence; and I heard a voice,--Shall mortal man be more just than God ?_ We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision; we are first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure cause of our emotion: but when this grand cause of terror makes its appearance, what is it?
Is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehensible darkness, more awful, more striking, more terrible, than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting, could possibly represent it?
When painters have attempted to give us clear representations of these very fanciful and terrible ideas, they have, I think, almost always failed; insomuch that I have been at a loss, in all the pictures I have seen of hell, to determine whether the painter did not intend something ludicrous.

Several painters have handled a subject of this kind, with a view of assembling as many horrid phantoms as their imagination could suggest; but all the designs I have chanced to meet of the temptations of St.Anthony were rather a sort of odd, wild grotesques, than any thing capable of producing a serious passion.

In all these subjects poetry is very happy.

Its apparitions, its chimeras, its harpies, its allegorical figures, are grand and affecting; and though Virgil's Fame and Homer's Discord are obscure, they are magnificent figures.

These figures in painting would be clear enough, but I fear they might become ridiculous.
SECTION V.
POWER.
Besides those things which _directly_ suggest the idea of danger, and those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical cause, I know of nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power.