Anything
more resolute, consummate, determinate in form, cannot be
conceived. Here, on the other hand, is a crystal of the same
substance, in a perfectly simple type of form--a plain six-sided
prism; but from its base to its point,--and it is nine inches
long,--it has never for one instant made up its mind what
thickness it will have. It seems to have begun by making itself as
thick as it thought possible with the quantity of material at
command. Still not being as thick as it would like to be, it has
clumsily glued on more substance at one of its sides. Then it has
thinned itself, in a panic of economy; then puffed itself out
again; then starved one side to enlarge another; then warped
itself quite out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged
on the edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite human
image of decrepitude and dishonor; but the worst of all the signs
of its decay and helplessness is that half-way up a parasite
crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the
side of the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and
then growing backwards, or downwards contrary to the direction of
the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least difference in
purity of substance between the first most noble stone, and this
ignoble and dissolute one.
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