We now returned to the Fall of the Cayne, infinitely superior to any in Wales, being two hundred feet perpendicular, uninterrupted by rocks, and not intercepted by the thick wood which encircles it. For a considerable time we both of us gazed with that rapt admiration, which loathes to be disturbed by the mutual exchange of ideas; and, stunned with the continual uproar, and never-ceasing tumultuous motion of the sparkling foam, we silently admired the grandeur of the landscape. On each side the horrific crags seemed to bid defiance to the goat’s activity. The Cayne, after this stunned cataract, throws its troubled waters over a rocky bed, till it unites itself with the Moddach below. “The feelings with which we view objects of the above description,” says the author of the Beauties, Harmonies, and Sublimities of Nature, “oppose the theory of Mr. Burke, who confines sublimity to objects of terror; those of Lord Kaimes, and Dr. Gerrad, who make it to consist in magnitude, and Dr. Blair, who places it in ‘force,’ are equally erroneous. The idea of Longinus, were we to associate sublimity in poetry with that of the material world, (which we are, however, not authorized to do,) is far from being correct. He defines it ‘a proud elevation of mind.’ When applied to material objects, this is neither cause nor consequence; for the experience of every man, from the proudest of princes to the humblest of peasants, proclaims, that the effect of all sublimity is astonishment, blended with awe: and when, at one moment, did pride and awe unite in the same bosom? The difference between sublimity of writing, and sublimity in objects, has not been sufficiently distinguished by the several writers on the subject of taste. No objects are beautiful and sublime, but by virtue of association. If they were, the Vale of Aylesbury would be beautiful to him, who had long resided in the Vale of Clwyd: and the Cliffs of Dover and the Peaks of Scotland would be equally sublime to the native of Crim Tartary and the peasant of the Tyrol. The opinions of many philosophers, in respect to the pleasure we derive from objects, which excite our pity, are equally false. The Abbé du Bos, Fontenelle, Hume, Akenside, and Burke, are all in error. We must refer to principles; and the principle in this argument resolves itself into the conclusion, that misfortune elicits sympathy, after the same manner that magnets affine, and planets gravitate. But actual final causes we have no power to define; though we frequently presume to do so. Man, indeed, has the faculty of judging, limitedly, of effects; but vain, proud, and arrogant as he is, he can only reason hypothetically, when he would treat of final causes and of final consequences.”