Variety is a great deal more than the spice of life : it is one of its necessary ingredients. We might conceive of, we might even—under certain pressing circumstances—eat a rice pudding without nutmeg; but who can conceive of a world without variety!

Picture to yourself, suggests a recent writer, an afternoon tea at which all the ladies were attired exactly alike. I think the guest unwittingly introduced to such a function would invent a swift excuse for exit. Imagine, then, a world in which all the trees rose at precisely the same angle, like telegraph poles; in which all the leaves were of uniform shape and colour; in which all the hills were like the hills in a child’s geography; in which the stars punctured heaven at painfully precise intervals; a world in which all men thought in the same way about the same things, and did the same things under the same circumstances at the same time. I think that, as we found a way of absenting ourselves from that hideous tea-party, we should also find a way (laws of gravitation notwithstanding) of slipping off the edge of this uninteresting planet.