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science, but can seldom restrict them to one book. The 

 same work does not often invite to a second perusal; at least 

 until the subject is partially forgotten, and therefore in some 

 degree new. We may acquire an habitual necessity of fre- 

 quenting the theatre ; but the same dramatic representation 

 will afford but a meagre amusement, unless its attractions be 

 revived by a change of performers, or some similar novelty. 

 Yet in our most constant and permanent habits, the 

 simplest variation suffices to render them agreeable. A person 

 will pace the same streets or travel the same road, day after day 

 and year after year, without the slightest disgust ; scarcely 

 adverting to the objects which he has so often beheld, and 

 finding perhaps all the novelty that enlivens his way, in his 

 own meditations. Or even if " he whistles as he goes, for 

 want of thought," the scenes he has traversed a thousand 

 times, may every time display a thousand minute varieties 

 that exclude the approach of chagrin and ennui. The same 

 landscape is not the same, in sunshine, and in twilight — when 

 the heavens are blue and serene, or enveloped in a curtain 

 of clouds — in a calm when the aspen scarce moves, and in a 

 breeze which sways with its breath the fields and the forests. 



Thus the perpetual recurrence of novelty is in some degree 

 necessary to preserve the existence of such of the habits as 

 have not renounced the control of the will ; even those which 

 Lave been of the longest continuance. And from this curious 

 circumstance we learn how closely these principles of action 



