Virtue, as the very word imports,
should have an appearance of seriousness, if not of austerity; and
to endeavour to trick her out in the garb of pleasure, because the
epithet has been used as another name for beauty, is to exalt her on a
quicksand; a most insidious attempt to hasten her fall by apparent
respect. Virtue and pleasure are not, in fact, so nearly allied in
this life as some eloquent writers have laboured to prove. Pleasure
prepares the fading wreath, and mixes the intoxicating cup; but the
fruit which virtue gives, is the recompence of toil: and, gradually
seen as it ripens, only affords calm satisfaction; nay, appearing to
be the result of the natural tendency of things, it is scarcely
observed. Bread, the common food of life, seldom thought of as a
blessing, supports the constitution and preserves health; still feasts
delight the heart of man, though disease and even death lurk in the
cup or dainty that elevates the spirits or tickles the palate. The
lively heated imagination likewise, to apply the comparison, draws the
picture of love, as it draws every other picture, with those glowing
colours, which the daring hand will steal from the rainbow that is
directed by a mind, condemned in a world like this, to prove its noble
origin by panting after unattainable perfection; ever pursuing what it
acknowledges to be a fleeting dream. An imagination of this vigorous
cast can give existence to insubstantial forms, and stability to the
shadowy reveries which the mind naturally falls into when realities
are found vapid.
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