My eyes are at a loss with Small Pica—but veritable Pica I can master, yet, after sunset. Indeed, I am sharpest-sighted by twilight, like a cat or an owl.
BULLER.
Have you any more annotations on Alison?
NORTH.
Many. The flaws are few. I verily believe these are all. To elucidate his Truths—in Taste and in Morals—would require from us Four a far longer Dialogue. Alison's Essays should be reprinted in one Pocket Volume—wisdom and Goodness are in that family hereditary—the editing would be a Work of Love—and in Bohn's Standard Library they would confer benefit on thousands who now know but their name.
SEWARD.
My dear sir, last time we voyaged the Loch, you said a few words—perhaps you may remember it—about those philosophers—Alison—the "Man of Taste," as Thomas Campbell loved to call him—assuredly is not of the number—who have insisted on the natural Beauty of Virtue, and natural Deformity of Vice, and have appeared to place our capacity of distinguishing Right from Wrong chiefly, if not solely, on the sense of this Beauty and of this Deformity—
NORTH.
I remember saying, my dear Seward, that they have drawn their views too much from the consideration of the state of these feelings in men who had been long exercised in the pure speculative contemplation of moral Goodness and Truth, as well as in the calmness and purity of a tranquil, virtuous life. Was it so?
SEWARD.