374 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
speaking a language peculiar to themselves, are yet 
denuded of those circumstantial details which are 
more suited to our limited faculties, and in which 
the generality of mankind can not only feel an 
interest, but a pleasure. 
(256.) We may liken these different emotions to 
those entertained by a traveller, who from some 
distant eminence first gains a view of Mount Etna, 
dilated into its full dimensions, its long extended 
outline unobstructed by a single object, rising gra- 
dually from the watery horizon on one side, and from 
that of vast plains on the other, until its pointed 
summit seems to touch the firmament. Here and 
there a deep line of ravines may be traced, and 
darker stripes indicate either regions of forests or 
extinguished rivers of lava; but beyond these obscure 
appearances nothing can be made out on the sides of 
this mighty mass, and which seems to circumscribe 
half the horizon. The eye of the traveller, indeed, 
seeks not for details: his mind is absorbed with 
ideas of vastness and indefinite sublimity: there 
is no room for lesser feelings, and there is no power 
of gratifying them.* But, when he descends from 
his station into the plains below, and after two 
days’ travel begins to ascend the sides of that 
stupendous mountain, whose details he is now to 
* T have here attempted to describe, most inadequately, the 
view of Mount Etna which bursts upon the traveller from 
the heights of Taormina; but no language can do it justice. 
I have never seen, either in the old or the new world, a pro- 
spect of such transcendant magnificence. See Denon’s Sicily, 
p- 15., and Brydone’s Tour. 
