It might, at first, seem strange that this should be so. The emotions of benevolence, of compassion, of patriotism, it might be said, must be the same whatever calls them forth. But a true analysis will show that there is not only a great but an essential difference. In the one case feeling is the natural result of a sound soul in direct communion with the realities of life. In the other it is entirely artificial.--One has its ground in the reason and the conscience; the other in the sensitive and imaginative nature. One comes to us in the due course of things; the other we create for ourselves. The one is ever recuperative, elevating while it humbles, softening while it invigorates. It grows stronger and purer by exercise. It never satiates, never exhausts, never reacts. The other ever produces an exhaustion corresponding to the unnatural excitement, and like every other artificial stimulus reduces the spiritual nature to a lower state at every repetition. In short, to use the expressive Scriptural comparisons, the one is a continual pouring into broken cisterns; the other is like a well of _living water_, springing up to everlasting life. Nothing is more alluringly deceptive, and therefore more dangerous, than the cultivation of the æsthetic nature, either to the exclusion of the moral, or by cherishing a public sentiment that confounds them together. We should be warned by the fact, of which history furnishes more than one example, that a nation may be distinguished for artistic and dramatic refinement, and yet present the most horrid contrast of crime and cruelty. A similar view may be taken of an age noted for a theoretical, or sentimental, or theatrical philanthropy. There is great reason to fear that it will be followed, if not accompanied, by one distinguished for great ferocity and recklessness of actual human suffering. But to return to our analogy. It might with equal justice be maintained, in respect to the body, that physical _strength_ is the same, whatever the cause by which it is produced. And yet we all know that there is a most essential difference between that vigor of nerve and muscle which is the result of the real and natural exercise of the healthy organism, in the performance of its legitimate functions, and that which comes from maddening artificial stimulants. They may appear the same for the moment; and yet we know that the one has an element of invigorating and _re-creating_ life; the other has the seeds of death, and brings death into the human microcosm with all its train of physical as well as spiritual woes.