the sublime in hydraulics, a something of
And this again leads us to a thought or two on what ₁
neither solid, liquid, nor aëriform; a something of extreme tenuity;
imponderable the characters of materiality
and the whole was immersed in a vessel of water,
and kept there for fourteen days ₂
a something of dread and wonder, and a something of dismay,
and a something, too, it must be confessed,
of what might be called the sublime in hydraulics ₃
as though there was a something of — we need not cite examples;
sketches and first thoughts are of no small value at times —
how much has been lost of this in the more finished and completed picture.
It is thus well to look back sometimes. ₁
sources
- “Royal Academy Speculations,” The Builder (London, July 31, 1880) : 131-132 / more
- “On the Supposed Identity of the Agent Concerned in the Phaenomena of Ordinary Electricity, Voltaic Electricity, Electro-magnetisim, Magneto-electricity, and Thermo-electricity.” By M. Donovan, in The Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science (Fourth Series; February 1852) : 117-127 (121) / more
- Isaac Taylor, “Personal Recollections, 1. The Cornish Coast Sixty Years Ago,” in Good Words for 1864 (London, 1864) : 8-19 (14) / more
a dramatic account of a shipwreck along the Cornish coast — an unfortunate Indiaman of 1400 tons, being “country-built, from Bombay [and having taken] a complement of its hands from the native maritime class.”
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