which offered the most self-evident and general expression. Rapture and despair are the words which serve to denote the highest climax of our agreeable or painful sensations. But rapture sometimes consists as much in the delicate languors of pleasure as in the more animated expressions of boisterous felicity. Despair may be delineated by the most humble dejection of the soul, and also by its more furious and ungoverned transports.-What unity can an author indicate here!—Should he paint rapture as a soft sensation of voluptuous indolence, with eyes swimming in pleasure, and half concealed under their lids; I might ask him, in my turn, whether a physiognomy, lively, gay, and sparkling with the most vivid joy; eyes floating in splendour, arms stretched out, the body bounding from earth, and dancing in the wanton air ;—I would ask him, I repeat, whether he would not recognise the required sentiment under this delineation also? (See Plates XXV. and XXVI.) To regain the unity, it must be necessary to take the word rapture in a more strict and literal sense, and to explain it by that spiritual and voluptuous intuition which forms the charm of a romantic imagination. This resource will avail nothing, however, when we come to examine despair: for if we contemplate the famous print of Count Ugolino, exhausted by famine, and already bearing a strong resemblance to a dead corpse, we shall there find those traits of despair which are indicated by the idea of suicide. To appear with fainting and dejected hands is a posture of fear, abasement of mind, an abject and vanquished courage, and utter despair. Thus Polybius wishing to denote the pusillanimity of Prusias, king of Bythynia, in his demeanour to the Roman senate, says, "Demissis manibus lumen salutavit." This gesture of utter despair is frequently portrayed in the hands of the Virgin Mary, at the foot of the cross. Leonardo da Vinci says, "You may represent a man abandoned to despair, holding a knife in his hand, with which he strikes himself; after having torn open his garments with one hand, he enlarges his wound: he will be upright, with the feet straggling the one from the other, or with his body bent, as if in the action of falling to the ground." You will please to remark that the above sketch is only a project of this inestimable artist; and that he is here speaking of what may |