" I obeyed with reverential silence; and as I passed the vestibule of the majestic edifice, my heart panted with an aweful expectation of beholding the shades of Solon, Lycurgus, and other departed Legislators, from the various nations of the world.

His dissertation upon the unfitness of poetry for the aweful subjects of our holy religion, though I do not entirely agree with with him, has all the merit of originality, with uncommon force and reasoning.

Indeed, Dryden himself, in his Hind and Panther, has given such a picture of his mind, that they who know the anxiety for repose as to the aweful subject of our state beyond the grave, though they may think his opinion ill-founded, must think charitably of his sentiment: 'But, gracious GOD, how well dost thou provide For erring judgements an unerring guide!

Nor was it only in the dignitaries of the Church that Johnson required a particular decorum and delicacy of behaviour; he justly considered that the clergy, as persons set apart for the sacred office of serving at the altar, and impressing the minds of men with the aweful concerns of a future state, should be somewhat more serious than the generality of mankind, and have a suitable composure of manners.

I have unfortunately recorded none of his conversation at the Bishop's where we dined together: but I have preserved his ingenious defence of his dining twice abroad in Passion-week; a laxity, in which I am convinced he would not have indulged himself at the time when he wrote his solemn paper in The Rambler[290], upon that aweful season.

Then collecting himself, and looking aweful, to make us feel how he could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, 'I say the woman was fundamentally sensible;' as if he had said, hear this now, and laugh if you dare.

A middle notion I believe to be the just one, which is, that communicants need not think a long train of preparatory forms indispensibly necessary; but neither should they rashly and lightly venture upon so aweful and mysterious an institution.

Could there be, upon this aweful subject, such a thing as balancing of accounts?

He seemed to be a little displeased at the manner of our importunity, and in great agitation called out, 'Do not talk thus of what is so aweful.

We shall presently see that when he approached nearer to his aweful change, his mind became tranquil, and he exhibited as much fortitude as becomes a thinking man in that situation.

Though usually grave, and even aweful, in his deportment, he possessed uncommon and peculiar powers of wit and humour; he frequently indulged himself in colloquial pleasantry; and the heartiest merriment was often enjoyed in his company; with this great advantage, that as it was entirely free from any poisonous tincture of vice or impiety, it was salutary to those who shared in it.

Before it the ocean roars, being dashed against monstrous broken rocks; grand and aweful propugnacula.

The tolling of the bells at the different villages on the banks gives a most aweful solemn religious sound, and the reverberation is prolonged by the high rocks, which seem to shut you out from the rest of the world.

Fine old trees of immense height covered with foliage and thickly studded together give to this forest an aweful and romantic appearance.

In the Sistine Chapel is the celebrated painting al fresco of the day of Judgment by Michel Angelo, an aweful subject and nobly and awefully executed.

The wild appearance of the Appennines, the aweful solitudes and the highly picturesque points of view that present themselves at the various sinuosities of the mountains and valleys; the view of the sea from the heights that tower above the towns of Oneglia and Sestri Levante, rendered this journey one of the most interesting I have ever made.

Nothing can be more romantic and picturesque than this journey, and there is something aweful in shooting these falls; these rafts are, however, so solidly constructed that there is no danger whatever.

Ah! think how little such an excuse will avail you in that aweful day, when your Saviour shall pronounce judgment on you for breaking a law too plain to be misunderstood, too sacred to be violated.

The earth of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, the House of Loreto, the Sudarium of Saint Veronica, aroused their deepest sentiments of aweful adoration.

And it strikes me as closing with a true and aweful Pathos: not often equall'd.

" The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a defect into some divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence.

These treacheries brought down the wavering scales of warfare, suddenly, with an aweful clangor; and now in France clean-hearted persons spoke of the Vicomte de Montbrison as they would speak of Ganelon or of Iscariot, and in every market-place was King Henry proclaimed as governor of the realm.