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.