ent of all around him:--there may be too habitual
yielding to authority, consisting, more than in indolence or diffidence,
in a conscious helplessness and incapacity of the mind to maintain
itself in its own place against the weight of general opinion; and there
may be too indiscriminate, too undisciplined, a sympathy with others,
which by the mere infection of feeling will subdue the reason. There
must be a weakness in dejection to him who thinks with sadness, if his
faith be pure, how gross is the error of the multitude, and that
multitude how vast;--a reluctance to embrace a creed that excludes so
many whom he loves, so many whom his youth has revered;--a difficulty to
his understanding to believe that those whom he knows to be, in much
that is good and honourable, his superiors, can be beneath him in this
which is the most important of all;--a sympathy pleading importunately
at his heart to descend to the fellowship of his brothers, and to take
their faith and wisdom for his own. How often, when under the impulses
of those solemn hours, in which he has felt with clearer insight and
deeper faith his sacred truths, he labours to win to his own belief
those whom he loves, will he be checked by their indifference or their
laughter! And will he not bear back to his meditations a painful and
disheartening sorrow, a gloomy discontent in that faith which takes in
but a portion of those whom he wishes to include in all his blessings?
Will he not be enfeebled by a distraction of inconsistent desires, when
he feels so strongly that the faith which fills his heart, the circle
within which he would embrace all he loves--would repose all his wishes
and hopes, and enjoyments--is yet incommensurate with his affections?

Even when the mind, strong in reason and just feeling united, and
relying on its strength, has attached itself to truth, how much is there
in the course and accidents of life that is for ever silently at work
for its degradation. There are pleasures deemed harmless, that lay
asleep the recollections of innocence: there are pursuits held
honourable, or imposed by duty, that oppress the moral spirit: above
all there is that perpetual connection with ordinary minds in the common
intercourse of society; that restless activity of frivolous
conversation, where men of all characters and all pursuits mixing
together, nothing may be talked of that is not of common interest to
all;--nothing, therefore, but those obvious though