this, that it is less selfish, less imbued with alarm, and is more sympathetic,
having in contemplation the feelings of others, rather than a
strict and immediate relation to our own individual suffering. We
are struck with horror even at the spectacle of artificial distress, but
it is peculiarly excited by the danger or actual suffering of others.
We see a child under a waggon wheel, and in danger of being
crushed by the enormous weight, with sensations of extreme horror.
Horror is full of energy; the body is in the utmost tension, not
unmanned as with fear. A sensation of cold seems to chill the
blood; the term is applicable “ damp horrort he flesh creeps, and
we feel that peculiar sensation which gives its name to the emotion.
In this sketch I have endeavoured to convey what I have witnessed
in those seized with hydrophobia. It was not taken from
the patient, but is rather the impression left on my mind after
visiting a patient under this greatest possible calamity. It is the
extreme expression of horror.
T e r r o r , when mingled with astonishment, is fixed and mute.
The fugitive and unnerved steps of mere terror, are changed for the
rooted and motionless figure of a creature appalled and stupified.
Spenser characterises well this kind of terror:
He answer’d nought at aH: but adding new
Fear to his first amazement, staring wide
With stony eyes and heartless hollow hue,
Astonish’d stood, as one that had espied
Infernal furies with their chains untied,
And trembling every joint did inly quake,
And falt’ring tongue at last these words seem’d forth to shake.
F a ir y Q u e e n .
D e s p a i r is a mingled emotion. While terror is in some measure
the balancing and distraction of a mind occupied with a possibility
of danger, despair is the total wreck of hope, the terrible assurance
of ruin having closed around, beyond all power of escape. The
expression of despair must vary with the nature of the distress of
which it forms the acme. In certain circumstances it will assume
a bewildered distracted air, as if madness were likely to afford the
only relief from mental agony. Sometimes there is at once a wildness
in the looks and total relaxation, as if falling into insensibility;