610 



PRACTICE OF FORMING 



BOOK II. 



Thus, a cottage on the brink of an immense precipice, or a 

 farm-house on the margin of the ocean, partake of the subli- 

 mity of their situations. But, should every other object seen 

 from these be shut out with trees, and on entering this woody 

 thicket the cottage or farm-house were viewed by itself, their 

 original characters would be fully preserved, although, in a 

 prospect or bird's-eye view of the country, the mass of wood on 

 the precipice containing a cottage, and the thicket by the sea- 

 shore containing a farm-house, would retain the previous cha- 

 racter of sublimity. 



There are, however, great men that can retire to an hum- 

 ble retreat in the most sublime situations, and with the grand- 

 est objects in nature continually in view, which would only sti- 

 mulate them to analogous exertions*, either of intellect or heroic 

 worth. And, there are some minds not already fully formed, 

 which the constant view of grand objects, and the contempla- 

 tion of the heroism of their ancestors, will incite to noble ac- 

 tions. But there are others exhausted by misfortune, and so habi- 

 tuated to melancholy, as to be prompted to diminish their own 

 appearance in the scale of existence. In a sublime habitation, 



* Since writing the above, I have found the following observation of the French 

 legislator Creuze de Lesser, in his Tour in Italy : speaking of the passage into 

 Savoy at Beauvoisin he observes, " Peu de spectacles sont plus imposants que cette 

 entree de montagnes, sur-tout pour quelqu'un qui n'en a pas encore vu. Voici le 

 pays des grandes pensees et des sensation profondes, et il y a bien loin d' ioi a Baga- 

 telle et a POpera-comique," 



