Great, Uncommon, or Beautiful.
There may, indeed, be something so terrible or offensive, that the
Horror or Loathsomeness of an Object may over-bear the Pleasure which
results from its Greatness, Novelty, or Beauty; but still there will be
such a Mixture of Delight in the very Disgust it gives us, as any of
these three Qualifications are most conspicuous and prevailing.

By Greatness, I do not only mean the Bulk of any single Object, but the
Largeness of a whole View, considered as one entire Piece. Such are the
Prospects of an open Champain Country, a vast uncultivated Desart, of
huge Heaps of Mountains, high Rocks and Precipices, or a wide Expanse of
Waters, where we are not struck with the Novelty or Beauty of the Sight,
but with that rude kind of Magnificence which appears in many of these
stupendous Works of Nature. Our Imagination loves to be filled with an
Object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for its Capacity. We
are flung into a pleasing Astonishment at such unbounded Views, and feel
a delightful Stillness and Amazement in the Soul at the Apprehension[s]
of them. The Mind of Man naturally hates every thing that looks like a
Restraint upon it, and is apt to fancy it self under a sort of
Confinement, when the Sight is pent up in a narrow Compass, and shortned
on every side by the Neighbourhood of Walls or Mountains. On the
contrary, a spacious Horizon is an Image of Liberty, where the Eye has
Room to range abroad, to expatiate at large on the Immensity of its
Views, and to lose it self amidst the Variety of Objects that offer
themselves to its Observation. Such wide and undetermined Prospects are
as pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of Eternity or Infinitude
are to the Understanding. But if there be a Beauty or Uncommonness
joined with this Grandeur, as in a troubled Ocean, a Heaven adorned with
Stars and Meteors, or a spacious Landskip cut out into Rivers, Woods,
Rocks, and Meadows, the Pleasure still grows upon us, as it rises from
more than a single Principle.

Every thing that is new or uncommon raises a Pleasure in the
Imagination, because it fills the Soul with an agreeable Surprize,
gratifies its Curiosity, and gives it an Idea of which it was not before
possest. We are indeed so often conversant with one Set of Objects, and
tired out with so many repeated Shows of the same Things, that whatever
is new or uncommon contributes a little to vary human Life, and to
divert our Minds, for a