AMBITION AND CONTENTMENT. It has been said that all virtues, carried to their extremes, become vices, as firmness may be carried to obstinacy, gentleness to weakness, faith to superstition, &c., &c.; and that while cultivating them, a perpetual care is necessary that they may not be resolved into those kindred vices. But there are other qualities of so opposite a character, that, though we may acknowledge them both to be virtues, we can hardly cherish them at the same time. Contentment is a virtue often urged upon us, and too often neglected. It is essential to our happiness; for how can we experience pleasure while dissatisfied with the station which has been allotted us, or the circumstances which befall us? but when contentment degenerates into that slothful feeling which will not exert itself for a greater good--which would sit, and smile at ease upon the gifts which Providence has forced upon its possessor, and turns away from the objects, which call for the active spring and tenacious grasp--when, I repeat, contentment is but another excuse for indolence, it then has ceased to be a virtue. And Ambition, which is so often denounced as a vice--which _is_ a vice when carried to an extent that would lead its votary to grasp all upon which it can lay its merciless clutch, and which heeds not the rights or possessions of a fellow-being when conflicting with its own domineering will, which then becomes so foul a vice--this same ambition, when kept within its proper bounds, is then a virtue; and not only a virtue, but the parent of virtues. The spirit of laudable enterprise, the noble desire for superior excellence, the just emulation which would raise itself to an equality with the highest--all this is the fruit of ambition. Here then are two virtues, ambition and contentment, both to be commended, both to be cherished, yet at first glance at variance with each other; at all events, with difficulty kept within those proper bounds which will prevent a conflict between them. We are not metaphysicians, and did we possess the power to draw those finely-pencilled mental and moral distinctions in which the acute reasoner delights so often to display his power, this would be no place for us to indulge our love for nicely attenuated theories. We are aware, that to cherish ambition for the good it may lead us to acquire, for the noble impulses of which it may be the fountain-spring, and yet to restrain those waters when they would gush forth with a tide which would bear away all better feelings of the heart--this, we know, is not only difficult, but almost impossible.