designed that we should be united by the bond of sympathy, he has
strengthened that bond by a proportionable delight; and there most where
our sympathy is most wanted,--in the distresses of others.


WORDS.

Natural objects affect us, by the laws of that connexion which
Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of
bodies, and certain consequent feelings in our mind. Painting affects in
the same manner, but with the superadded pleasure of imitation.
Architecture affects by the laws of nature, and the law of reason; from
which latter result the rules of proportion, which make a work to be
praised or censured, in the whole or in some part, when the end for
which it was designed is or is not properly answered. But as to words;
they seem to me to affect us in a manner very different from that in
which we are affected by natural objects, or by painting or
architecture; yet words have as considerable a share in exciting ideas
of beauty and of the sublime as many of those, and sometimes a much
greater than any of them.


NATURE ANTICIPATES MAN.

Whenever the wisdom of our Creator intended that we should be affected
with anything, he did not confide the execution of his design to the
languid and precarious operation of our reason; but he endued it with
powers and properties that prevent the understanding, and even the will;
which, seizing upon the senses and imagination, captivate the soul
before the understanding is ready either to join with them, or to oppose