That this is so is evident, because there are many actions which are right, which are imperatively required by duty, which yet do not awaken in the mind of the impartial spectator any admiration--for we must here keep in mind the distinction already made between admiration and approbation. The simple payment of a debt, for example, does not awaken any admiration, though we approve the act and should strongly condemn him who should not do it when it was in his power. In this case, there can be mingled with the performance of duty no play of the generous emotions. He who performs all his actions solely from a sense of duty, has our approbation, our respect; but he who, in addition to this, is possessed of warm affections, which always coincide in their promptings with what is right, has also our admiration and love. Duty is to the affections, in the conduct of life, what logic is to rhetoric in a discourse. Logic forms an excellent body for a discourse; we assent to it, we approve it, it is good, all good, but it awakens no admiration. It is not till rhetoric sends its warm life-blood to mantle on the cold cheek of logic, and clothes its angular form in the garments of taste, that we begin to admire the discourse. And so it is with duty. It is an excellent body to the course of our conduct in life; nothing else will do, but it may be so performed as to appear unamiable and even repulsive. In order to be beautiful, there must be connected with it some manifestation of natural affection or graceful emotion.
And here I may remark, that though we have a right to expect of every man that he will do his duty, yet the display of this beauty is not equally within the power of all, since the existence and manifestation of emotion depend, to some extent, upon the temperament. As there are some who have naturally a meagre intellect, so there are others whose minds seem to be barren of those finer sympathies and affections of our nature which are the verdure of the soul, and upon which the eye always rests with pleasure. The characters of some good men are dry and unattractive. They are harsh, and hard-visaged, and seem too much like wooden men, moved by rule and calculation. Such persons often seem better, and worse, than they really are. Their freedom from extravagancies on the one hand, and on the other, that want of feeling which is wrongly termed by many hardness of heart, is equally the result of temperament.