ke the pressure of a talisman given to baffle the illusions of
enchantment, warns a pure mind against hypocrisy. There is another
delusion more difficult to resist and more slowly dissipated. It is when
he finds, as he often will, some of the real features of excellence in
the purity of their native form. For then his rapid imagination will
gather round them all the kindred features that are wanting to perfect
beauty; and make for him, where he could not find, the moral creature of
his expectation; peopling, even from this human world, his little circle
of affection with forms as fair as his heart desired for its love.

But when, from the eminence of life which he has reached, he lifts up
his eyes, and sends out his spirit to range over the great scene that is
opening before him and around him, the whole prospect of civilised life
so wide and so magnificent;--when he begins to contemplate, in their
various stations of power or splendour, the leaders of mankind, those
men on whose wisdom are hung the fortunes of nations, those whose genius
and valour wield the heroism of a people;--or those, in no inferior
pride of place, whose sway is over the mind of society, chiefs in the
realm of imagination, interpreters of the secrets of nature, rulers of
human opinion;--what wonder, when he looks on all this living scene,
that his heart should burn with strong affection, that he should feel
that his own happiness will be for ever interwoven with the interests of
mankind? Here then the sanguine hope with which he looks on life, will
again be blended with his passionate desire of excellence; and he will
still be impelled to single out some, on whom his imagination and his
hopes may repose. To whatever department of human thought or action his
mind is turned with interest, either by the sway of public passion or by
its own impulse, among statesmen, and warriors, and philosophers, and
poets, he will distinguish some favoured names on which he may satisfy
his admiration. And there, just as in the little circle of his own
acquaintance, seizing eagerly on every merit they possess, he will
supply more from his own credulous hope, completing real with imagined
excellence, till living men, with all their imperfections, become to
him the representatives of his perfect ideal creation;--till,
multiplying his objects of reverence, as he enlarges his prospect of
life, he will have surrounded himself with idols of his own hands, and
his imaginatio