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Aid of Lochlin and Innisfail, in the troubled ocean and the thunder- 

 ing heaven, to whofe noife that of the battle is compared, we 

 fhall in vain look for order, regularity or proportion. There is 

 much fublimity in the defcription, but no beauty. Let us con- 

 fider great or elevated vifible objedts as exciting different emo- 

 tions, as raifing or depreffing the mind ; let us combine the 

 ftormy grandeur of the fky and ocean with the regular magnifi- 

 cence which in framing his fyftem Lord Kaims appears to have 

 exclufively confidered, and I imagine that we fhall have a bafis. 

 fufficiently broad for the ftrudure of figurative fublimity. 



There appear to me to be three claffes of fublime objeds — 

 external fenfible objeds, thofe that excite the emotion which 

 Dodor Blair has called the moral or fentimental fublime, and fu- 

 perior beings. I have called the firft clafs that of external fenfible 

 rather than that of vifible objeds, that I might include within 

 it the fublime of found, " The burft of thunder or of cannon, 

 " the roaring of winds, the fliouting of multitudes, the found of 

 " vaft catarads of water," are all, as Dodor Blair has obferved, 

 " inconteftibly grand objeds -," and they appear to me to excite 

 fijnotions fimilar to thofe with which we are afFeded by the mag- 

 nitude or elevation of objeds of fight. The latter have been 

 already in fome meafure confidered. It has I think appeared that 

 the emotions excited by them are not all of the fame kind. 

 The ftarry firmament, and the tempeftuous iky illuminated only 

 by the blaze of lightning, are both fublime, but furely the emo- 

 tions witTi which they are beheld are difterent. The pious 



admiration 



