Languages & literature > Abridgement of lectures on rhetoric

10 SUBLIMITY IN OBJECTS.
variety produce in our minds the fenfation of beau¬
ty ; any reafon, we can affign, is extremely imperfeft.
Thofe firft principles of internal fenfation nature ap¬
pears to have ftudioufly concealed.
It is fome confolation however, that, although the
efficient caufe is obfcure, the final caufe of thofe fenfa-
tions lies commonly more open ; and here we muft ob-
ferve the ftrong impreffion, which the powers of Tafte
and Imagination arc calculated to give us of the bene¬
volence of our Creator- By thefe powers he hath
widely enlarged the fphere of the pleafures of human
life ; and thofe too of a kind the moll pure and inno¬
cent. The neccllary purpofes of life might have been
anfwered, though our fenfes of feeing and hearing
had only ferved to dillinguifh external objedts, with¬
out giving us any of thofe refined and delicate fenfations
of beauty and grandeur, with which we are now lb
much delighted*
The pleafure, which arifes from fublimity or gran¬
deur, deferves to be fully confidered ; becaufe it has a
eharadter more precife and diftindtly marked, than any
other of the pleafures of the imagination, and becaufe it
coincides more diredlly with our mainiubjedt. The fim-
plcft form of external grandeur is feen in the vail and
boundlefs profpedh, prefented to us by nature; fuch, as
widely extended plairs, of which the eye can find n»
limits ; the firmament of heaven ; or the boundlefs ex-
panfe of the ocean. All vailnefs produces the impreffica