"Varro, the most learned of the Romans," continues Seneca, "considers it the best compensation for the change of dwelling-place, that the nature of things is everywhere the same. Marcus Brutus finds sufficient consolation in the fact that he who goes into exile can take all that he has of truly good with him. Is not what we lose a mere trifle? Wherever we turn, two glorious things go with us--Nature that is everywhere, and Virtue that is our own. Let us travel through all possible countries, and we shall find no part of the earth which man cannot make his home. Everywhere the eye can rise to heaven, and all the divine worlds are at an equal distance from all the earthly. So long, therefore, as my eyes are not debarred that spectacle, with seeing which they are never satisfied; so long as I can behold moon and sun; so long as my gaze can rest on the other celestial luminaries; so long as I can inquire into their rising and setting, their courses, and the causes of their moving faster or slower; so long as I can contemplate the countless stars of night, and mark how some are immoveable--how others, not hastening through large spaces, circle in their own path, how many beam forth with a sudden brightness, many blind the eye with a stream of fire as if they fell, others pass along the sky in a long train of light; so long as I am with these, and dwell, as much as it is allowed to mortals, in heaven; so long as I can maintain my soul, which strives after the contemplation of natures related to it, in the pure ether, of what importance to me is the soil on which my foot treads? This island bears no fruitful nor pleasant trees; it is not watered by broad and navigable streams; it produces nothing that other nations can desire; it is hardly fertile enough to supply the necessities of the inhabitants; no precious stone is here hewn (_non pretiosus lapis hic cæditur_); no veins of gold or silver are here brought to light; but the soul is narrow that delights itself with what is earthly. It must be guided to that which is everywhere the same, and nowhere loses its splendour." Had I Humboldt's _Cosmos_ at hand, I should look whether the great natural philosopher has taken notice of these lofty periods of Seneca, where he treats of the sense of the ancients for natural beauty.