We assert, and we defy the soundest sophist in the world to contradict us, that these mixed characters obtain and preserve a greater portion of the admiration of the world, than more consistent and less interesting personages. We wonder not at the uniformity of the fixed star, but our imagination is actively employed upon the unusual appearance of the comet. Thus the man of firm and unchangeable steadiness of principle receives our esteem, and is forgotten; while the meteoric appearance of inconsistent eccentricity takes instant hold of our admiration, and is decorated with ten thousand indescribable attractions by the proper exercise of the Asyndeton. But why do we dilate so much upon the authority of Alcibiades? It has been the almost invariable practice of all great men, in all ages, to pay particular attention to the cultivation of this figure. What a prodigy of the Asyndeton was Alexander! His father Philip may have had more science, perhaps more bottom; but the eccentricities of Alexander, the extraordinary rapidity with which he changed the ring for the gin-shop, and laid down the thunder-bolt of Ammon to assume the quart-pot of Hercules, have given, and will preserve to him, the first leaf in the good books of the young and the hasty. Are we not more delighted by the capricious mutability of Queen Bess than by the moral uniformity of Queen Anne? Is it not a pleasing marvel, and a marvellous pleasure, to look at the last days of Oliver Cromwell, when the usurper, perpetually stretched upon the tenterhooks of conscience, dared not travel the same road twice, nor sleep two nights following in the same bed? Spirit of mutability, what pranks must thou have played with the Protector!