As serpents and poisonous animals of almost all kinds.

And to things of great dimensions, if we annex an adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater.

A level plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean; but can it ever fill the mind with anything so great as the ocean itself?
This is owing to several causes; but it is owing to none more than this, that the ocean is an object of no small terror.

Indeed terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime.

Several languages bear a strong testimony to the affinity of these ideas.