Both touch us pleasantly, but in different ways.  The sight of a mountain with a snowy peak reaching above the clouds, the account of a storm ... these excite pleasure, but mixed with awe; while flowery meadows, valleys with winding streams and covered by browsing herds, a description of Elysium ... also cause pleasant feelings, but of a gay and radiant kind.  To appreciate the first sensations adequately, we must have a feeling for the sublime; to appreciate the second, a feeling for the beautiful.

He mentioned tall oaks, lonely shades in consecrated groves, and night-time, as sublime; day, beds of flowers, low hedges, and trees cut into shapes, as beautiful.

Minds which possess the feeling for the sublime are inclined to lofty thoughts of friendship, scorn of the world, eternity, by the quiet stillness of a summer evening, when the twinkling starlight breaks the darkness.  The light of day impels to activity and cheerfulness.  The sublime soothes, the beautiful stimulates.

He goes on to subdivide the sublime: 

This feeling is sometimes accompanied by horror or by dejection, sometimes merely by quiet admiration, at other times by a sense of wide-spread beauty.  I will call the first the terrible, the second the noble, the third the splendid sublime.

Profound solitude is sublime, but in a terrible way.  This is why great deserts, like the Desert of Gamo in Tartary, have always been the supposed abode of fearful shades, hobgoblins, and ghostly spectres.  The sublime is always great and simple; the beautiful may be small, elaborate, and ornamental.

He tried, too, to define the romantic in Nature, though very vaguely: 

    The dreadful variety of the sublime, when quite unnatural, is
    adventurous.  When sublimity or beauty is excessive, it is called
    romantic.

In his Kalligone, which appeared in 1800, Herder quoted Kant in making one of the characters say, ’One calls day beautiful, night sublime,’ and tried to carry the idea a step further; ’The sublime and beautiful are not opposed to each other, but stem and boughs of a tree whose top is the most sublimely beautiful of all,’ that is the romantic.  In the same book he attempted to analyze his impressions of Nature, calling a rugged place odious, an insignificant one without character tedious.  ‘In the presence of great mountains,’ he says, ’the spirit is filled with bold aspirations, whereas in gentle valleys it lies quiet.’  Harmony in variety was his ideal, like the sea in storm and calm.  ’An ocean of beautiful forms in rest and movement.’

And in reference to the contrast between a place made ’dreadful and horrible’ by a torrent dashing over rocks and a quiet and charming valley, he said:  ’These changes follow unalterable laws, which are recognized by our minds, and in harmony with our feelings.’  He saw the same order in variety among plants, from the highest to the lowest, from palm tree to moss.  In the second part of the book he gave an enthusiastic description of the sublime in sky and sea.