The calming grace approaches more nearly to dignity, inasmuch as it manifests itself through the moderation which it imposes upon the impetuosity of the movements. It is to this the man addresses himself whose imagination is over-excited; it is in this peaceful atmosphere that the heart seeks repose after the violence of the storm. It is to this that I reserve especially the appellation of grace. Attraction is not incompatible with laughter, jest, or the sting of raillery; grace agrees only with sympathy and love. Dignity has also its degrees and its shades. If it approaches grace and beauty, it takes the name of nobleness; if, on the contrary, it inclines towards the side of fear, it becomes haughtiness. The utmost degree of grace is _ravishing charm_. Dignity, in its highest form, is called _majesty_. In the ravishing we love our Ego, and we feel our being fused with the object. Liberty in its plenitude and in its highest enjoyment tends to the complete destruction of liberty, and the excitement of the mind to the delirium of the voluptuousness of the senses. Majesty, on the contrary, proposes to us a law, a moral ideal, which constrains us to turn back our looks upon ourselves. God is there, and the sentiment we have of His presence makes us bend our eyes upon the ground. We forget all that is without ourselves, and we feel but the heavy burden of our own existence. Majesty belongs to what is holy. A man capable of giving us an idea of holiness possesses majesty, and if we do not go so far as to kneel, our mind at least prostrates itself before him. But the mind recoils at once upon the slightest trace of _human imperfection_ which he discovers in the object of his adoration, because that which is only comparatively great cannot subdue the heart. Power alone, however terrible or without limit we may suppose it to be, can never confer majesty. Power imposes only upon the sensuous being; majesty should act upon the mind itself, and rob it of its liberty. A man who can pronounce upon me a sentence of death has neither more nor less of majesty for me the moment I am what I ought to be. His advantage over me ceases as soon as I insist on it. But he who offers to me in his person the image of pure will, before him I would prostrate myself, if it is possible, for all eternity. Grace and dignity are too high in value for vanity and stupidity not to be excited to appropriate them by imitation. There is only one means of attaining this: it is to imitate the moral state of which they are the expression. All other imitation is but to ape them, and would be recognized directly through exaggeration. Just as exaggeration of the sublime leads to inflation, and affectation of nobleness to preciosity, in the same manner affectation of grace ends in coquetry, and that of dignity to stiff solemnity, false gravity.