their ardent admirers in this country, presumed to republish the "Vindication of Natural Society," as a piece of serious argument, and thus endeavoured to pervert the irony into a weapon of deadly malignity against the principles which it was constructed to defend. The ravages of war, and the other calamities which the author of the tract has so forcibly pourtrayed, these visionaries, to call them by no worse a name, would fain ascribe to the social state and the legislative principle, as the necessary results of what they are pleased to deem an unnatural compact, and an arbitrary imposition. All this might have passed as the dream of political madness, had it not been for the barefaced impudence of pressing BURKE into a service which no man ever held in greater abhorrence, and which he, in this early production of his pen, actually held up to public ridicule.

While the imitation of Bolinbroke engaged the public attention, and continued to be the subject of general discourse, the Author was busily employed in conducting through the press, a performance of another description, entitled, "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful." This elegant disquisition which appeared without a name at the beginning of 1757, is divided into five parts; the first is devoted to

an examination of the passions immediately connected with, and excited by, the two objects of investigation; in the second and third the Author enters into a minute discussion of the properties of those things in nature, which produce in us ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The fourth is directed to the physical cause by which those properties in things are fitted to raise correspondent affections in the mind; and in the last he considers the operation of words.

The inquiry opens by establishing the doctrine of a distinction between positive and relative pain and pleasure; after which the passions are reduced to two heads, those of self-preservation, and those of society. To the first of these principles are referred all the passions which have their origin in positive pain, and relative pleasure; while to the latter are assigned all the relative pains and positive pleasures. Hence it is inferred that the former is the source of the Sublime, as the latter is of the Beautiful.

Under the head of Society, the author considers three passions, as those which cause the greatest part of the pleasure, which we take in the fine arts, namely, Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition. The second part of the inquiry opens with a definition of the passion, caused by the great and sublime in nature, and

which in its highest degree is astonishment, or "that state of the soul wherein all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror." This leads the author to the consideration of Terror, as being in some mode or other, the great instrument in producing the Sublime, by exalting small, and increasing the effects of large, objects. This position is illustrated by many apposite examples, particularly by the noble description of Death, in Milton, a portrait which is justly said to "astonish with its gloomy pomp and expressive uncertainty." The inquirer then enters more fully and minutely, into a discussion of the difference between Clearness and Obscurity, for the purpose of proving that the latter generates more sublime ideas than the former. "It is our ignorance of things," says he, "that causes all our admiration, and chiefly excites our passions. Knowledge and acquaintance make the most striking causes affect but little. It is thus with the vulgar, and all men are as the vulgar in what they do not understand. The ideas of eternity and infinity, are among the most affecting we have; and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really understand so little, as of infinity and eternity." Having fixed this principle firmly by uncontested experience, and an appeal to universal feeling, the author resolves all general privations into

causes of the Sublime; such as Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude, Silence, and Extent. To the idea of Vastness, he refers in some degree another impression, that of Infinity which arises when we do not see the bounds of any large object, or when its parts are so continued to any indefinite number, that the imagination meets no check to hinder its extending them at pleasure.

Having examined Extension, the author proceeds to consider Light and Colours. He observes that in general, Darkness is a more sublime idea than Light, because the latter unless it be unusually splendid, is of too common occurrence to affect the mind. On the same principle he makes dusky colours, or at least those which are very strong, causes of the Sublime in preference to those which are light and brilliant.

We are next called to the other senses, the principal of which is Hearing; and here, conformable to the general doctrine, great loudness is stated to be grand in the highest degree, while intermitting sounds, the cries of animals, and sudden silence are considered, according to circumstances, as accessory causes of the Sublime. The fourth part of the Inquiry treats of the connexion which subsists between certain qualities in bodies, and particular emotions of the human mind, in order to discover

the efficient cause of the Sublime and Beautiful. In the course of this abstruse disquisition, the bodily effects of Pain and Terror are described, from whence arises a question, how anything allied to such impressions, can be productive of delight. In answer to this, the author observes, that inaction is a very noxious principle, and the cause of many dangerous distempers by the languor it occasions; that exercise which resembles labor and pain, in being an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles, is the best cure for dejection and spleen, and that therefore it is accompanied with a degree of pleasure.

After this the nature of Vision comes under examination, in order to shew how bodies of vast dimensions, are capable of exciting the contraction or tension of the nerves; which property is attributed to the impressions made on the eye, by the rays reflected back upon it from those objects.

The Inquiry is next directed to the nature of Succession, and the uniformity of Sounds in order to explain their effects, and the analogy between them and visible things. Our author now enters into contact with Locke on the subject of Darkness, which that great writer says, does not naturally convey an idea of terror. MR. BURKE, on the contrary, maintains that there is an association which makes obscurity