s able to attain an entire love
and devotion to the Deity, will easily perceive that it is not the
first, the most natural, and the most striking effect which proceeds
from that idea. Thus we have traced power through its several gradations
unto the highest of all, where our imagination is finally lost; and we
find terror, quite throughout the progress, its inseparable companion,
and growing along with it, as far as we can possibly trace them. Now, as
power is undoubtedly a capital source of the sublime, this will point
out evidently from whence its energy is derived, and to what class of
ideas we ought to unite it.

SECTION VI.

PRIVATION.

ALL _general_ privations are great, because they are all terrible;
_vacuity_, _darkness_, _solitude_, and _silence_. With what a fire of
imagination, yet with what severity of judgment, has Virgil amassed all
these circumstances, where he knows that all the images of a tremendous
dignity ought to be united at the mouth of hell! Where, before he
unlocks the secrets of the great deep, he seems to be seized with a
religious horror, and to retire astonished at the boldness of his own
design:

Dii, quibus imperium est animarum, umbraeque _silentes_!
Et Chaos, et Phlegethon! loca _nocte silentia_ late!
Sit mihi fas audita loqui! sit numine vestro
Pandere res alta terra et _caligine_ mersas!
Ibant _obscuri_, _sola_ sub _nocte_, per _umbram_,
Perque domos Ditis _vacuas_, et _inania_ regus.

"Ye subterraneous gods! whose awful sway
The gliding ghosts, and _silent_ shades obey:
O Chaos hoar! and Phlegethon profound!
Whose solemn empire stretches wide around;
Give me, ye great, tremendous powers, to tell
Of scenes and wonders in the depth of hell;
Give me your mighty secrets to display
From those _black_ realms of darkness to the day."

PITT.

"_Obscure_ they went through dreary _shades_ that led
Along the _waste_ dominions of the _dead_."

DRYDEN.

SECTION VII.

VASTNESS.

Greatness[17] of dimension is a powerful cause of the sublime. This is
too evident, and the observation too common, to need any illustration;
it is not so common to consider in what ways greatness of dimension,
vastness of extent or quantity, has the most striking effect. For,
certainly, there are ways and modes wherein the same quantity of
extension shall produ