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 produce greater effects than it is found to do in others. Extension is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the length strikes least; a hundred yards of even ground will never work such an effect as a tower a hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine, likewise, that height is less grand than depth; and that we are more struck at looking down from a precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not very positive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the sublime, than an inclined plane, and the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger than where it is smooth and polished. It would carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the cause of these appearances, but certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of speculation. However, it may not be amiss to add to these remarks upon magnitude, that as the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the last extreme of littleness is in some measure sublime likewise; when we attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we pursue animal life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings, that