At night the contrary rule will hold, but for the very same reason; and the more highly a room is then illuminated, the grander will the passion be.
SECTION XVI.
COLOR CONSIDERED AS PRODUCTIVE OF THE SUBLIME.
Among colors, such as are soft or cheerful (except perhaps a strong red, which is cheerful) are unfit to produce grand images.

An immense mountain covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue; and night more sublime and solemn than day.

Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of sad and fuscous colors, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the like.

Much of gilding, mosaics, painting, or statues, contribute but little to the sublime.

This rule need not be put in practice, except where an uniform degree of the most striking sublimity is to be produced, and that in every particular; for it ought to be observed, that this melancholy kind of greatness, though it be certainly the highest, ought not to be studied in all sorts of edifices, where yet grandeur must be studied; in such cases the sublimity must be drawn from the other sources; with a strict caution however against anything light and riant; as nothing so effectually deadens the whole taste of the sublime.
SECTION XVII.
SOUND AND LOUDNESS.
The eye is not the only organ of sensation by which a sublime passion may be produced.