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to do what she had a taste for, her mind was a luxuriant wilderness,
inaccessible to others, and utterly unproductive to its possessor.
Unpleasing and unfitted in the sphere she was in, and yet unfitted by
habit and timidity for any other, weariness and disgust were her daily
portion; her fine sensibilities, her deep feelings, her expansive
thoughts, remained; but only to be wounded, to irritate, to mislead her.

Where is the moral of my tale, and what the use of telling it? I have
told it because I see that God has his purposes in every thing that he
has done; and man has his own, and disregards them. And every day I hear
it disputed, with acrimony and much unkindness, what faculties and
characters it is better to have or not to have, without any
consideration of what God has given or withheld; and standards are set
up, by which all must be measured, though, alas! they cannot take from
or add one cubit to their statures. "There is one glory of the sun, and
another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star
differeth from another star in glory." Why do we not censure the sun for
outshining the stars, and the pale moon for having no light but what she
borrows?

Instead of settling for others what they ought to be, and choosing for
ourselves what we will be, would it not be better to examine the
condition in which we are actually placed, and the faculties actually
committed to us? and consider what was the purpose of Heaven in the
former, and what the demand of Heaven in the occupation of the latter?
If we have much, we are not at liberty to put it aside, and say we
should be better without it; if we have little, we are not at liberty to
be dissatisfied, and aspiring after more. And surely we are not at
liberty to say that another has too much, or too little, of what God has
given! We may have our preferences, but we must not mistake them for
standards of right.

Every character has beauties peculiar to itself, and dangers to which it
is peculiarly exposed; and there are duties, pertaining to each, apart
from the circumstances in which they may be placed. Nothing, therefore,
can be more contrary to the manifest order and disposition of
Providence, than to endeavor to be, or do, whatever we admire in
another, or to force ourselves to be and do whatever we admire in
ourselves. Which character, of the endless variety that surrounds us, is
the most happy, the most useful, and most deserving to be bel