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 T to 



* I 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. 



