To all this may be added another faculty, 

 which without attempting accurately to analize 

 it, may be described as that which affords to the 

 mind the perception of natural beauty and gran- 

 deur. This fine emotion, which is distinguished 

 by the name of Taste, on whatever ultimate 

 principles it may depend, is, doubtless, the chief 

 source of the pleasure arising from the contem- 

 plation of natural appearances. We perceive 

 objects lovely in themselves, or lovely in their 

 combinations, and our hearts warm with a veiy 

 peculiar and elevating enjoyment ; we perceive 

 objects sublime from their vastness, or magnifi- 

 cent from combined splendour and greatness, 

 and immediately within us sentiments arise of 

 wonder and astonishment, or of awe and vene- 

 ration. Who can find words to express the 

 delight he has experienced from contemplating 

 the beauties of a summer landscape, when the 

 shades of evening were falling sweetly and tran- 

 quilly around ; or the sublimity of the starry 

 heavens, when the darkness of a winter night 

 gave depth to the etherial blue of the firmament, 

 and brilliancy to the innumerable worlds which 

 gemmed that boundless canopy ? 



The Love of Nature, then, is a complex feel- 

 ing, arising from different qualities of the mind, 

 mysteriously combined, and with which external 

 objects have been made to harmonize, so as to 

 call them into powerful exercise, and cause them 

 to be a source of exquisite and varied enjoy- 

 ment ; and it is useful to trace the adaptations 



