Whatever connects the individual with the elements, whether by abrupt or imperceptible means, is an instrument of sublimity, as, whatever connects it in the same manner with, or tears it from the species, may become an organ of pathos: in this discrimination lies the rule by which our art, to astonish or move, ought to choose the scenery of its subjects. It is not by the accumulation of infernal or magic machinery, distinctly seen, by the introduction of Hecate and a chorus of female demons and witches, by surrounding him with successive apparitions at once, and a range of shadows moving above or before him, that Macbeth can be made an object of terror,--to render him so you must place him on a ridge, his down-dashed eye absorbed by the murky abyss; surround the horrid vision with darkness, exclude its limits, and shear its light to glimpses. This art of giving to the principal figure the command of the horizon, is perhaps the only principle by which modern art might have gained an advantage over that of the ancients, and improved the dignity of composition, had it been steadily pursued by its great restorers, the painters of Julio II. and Leone X., though we find it more attended to in the monumental imagery of the Capella Sistina than in the Stanze and the Cartoons of Raffaello, which being oftener pathetic or intellectual than sublime, suffered less by neglecting it. The same principle which has developed in the cone, the form generally most proper for composing a single figure or a group, contains the reason why the principal figure or group should be the most elevated object of a composition, and locally command the accidents of scenery and place. The Apollo of Belvedere, singly or in a group, was surely not composed to move at the bottom of a valley, nor the Zeus of Phidias to be covered with a roof.