"Terror" is much on our minds these days. Whether we believe that terrorist activity has made the world a more dangerous place to live, or condemn the "war on terror" as a mere cover for U.S. President George W. Bush's political ambition, the concept of terror has saturated our daily life.
The British philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-97), too, placed terror at the heart of his age's zeitgeist, writing, "No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as terror." But, the writer continued in his 1756 essay, "Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful": "Whatever is terrible with regard to sight, is sublime."
During Britain's Georgian and Victorian eras, "terror" wasn't an omnipresent threat, or a political slogan: It was the ultimate thrill. Terror was more than fear, it encompassed a whole range of emotions. It was intimidating, yet also awe-inspiring; it was the preserve of both God and Nature; it hovered gloomily not only over ruined abbeys and Gothic castles, but also over mountains and waterfalls. The creed of those who got their kicks from terror was Romanticism.