is so much studyed in music and poetry, is called the fail or cadency of
the harmony or period; the idea of facility communicating to us that of
descent, in the same manner as descent produces a facility?

Since the imagination, therefore, in running from low to high, finds an
opposition in its internal qualities and principles, and since the soul,
when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and
throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action, where
its courage meets with matter to nourish and employ it; it follows, that
everything, which invigorates and inlivens the soul, whether by touching
the passions or imagination naturally conveys to the fancy this
inclination for ascent, and determines it to run against the natural
stream of its thoughts and conceptions. This aspiring progress of
the imagination suits the present disposition of the mind; and the
difficulty, instead of extinguishing its vigour and alacrity, has the
contrary affect, of sustaining and encreasing it. Virtue, genius, power,
and riches are for this reason associated with height and sublimity; as
poverty, slavery, and folly are conjoined with descent and lowness. Were
the case the same with us as Milton represents it to be with the angels,
to whom descent is adverse, and who cannot sink without labour and
compulsion, this order of things would be entirely inverted; as appears
hence, that the very nature of ascent and descent is derived from the
difficulty and propensity, and consequently every one of their effects
proceeds from that origin.

All this is easily applied to the present question, why a considerable
distance in time produces a greater veneration for the distant objects
than a like removal in space. The imagination moves with more difficulty
in passing from one portion of time to another, than in a transition
through the parts of space; and that because space or extension appears
united to our senses, while time or succession is always broken and
divided. This difficulty, when joined with a small distance, interrupts
and weakens the fancy: But has a contrary effect in a great removal. The
mind, elevated by the vastness of its object, is still farther elevated
by the difficulty of the conception; and being obliged every moment to
renew its efforts in the transition from one part of time to another,
feels a more vigorous and sublime disposition, than in a transition
through the parts of space, where the id