good. They are pieces of clay that have received distinct
impressions: they must, therefore, necessarily be in different
shapes; or, even if we allow them both to have the same lovely
form of virtue, it must be acknowledged that one has undergone
the further process, necessary to give firmness and durability to
its substance, while the other is still exposed to injury, and
liable to be broken by every accidental impulse. An ardent love
and admiration of virtue seems to imply the existence of
something opposite to it, and it seems highly probable that the
same beauty of form and substance, the same perfection of
character, could not be generated without the impressions of
disapprobation which arise from the spectacle of moral evil.

When the mind has been awakened into activity by the
passions, and the wants of the body, intellectual wants arise;
and the desire of knowledge, and the impatience under ignorance,
form a new and important class of excitements. Every part of
nature seems peculiarly calculated to furnish stimulants to
mental exertion of this kind, and to offer inexhaustible food for
the most unremitted inquiry. Our mortal Bard says of Cleopatra:

Custom cannot stale
Her infinite variety.

The expression, when applied to any one object, may be considered
as a poetical amplification, but it is accurately true when
applied to nature. Infinite variety seems, indeed, eminently her
characteristic feature. The shades that are here and there
blended in the picture give spirit, life, and prominence to her
exuberant beauties, and those roughnesses and inequalities, those