or bad only according as they are cultivated or controlled; and
we cannot see that the unregulated social feelings which lead a man to
plunge into dissipation, and to drag his friends along with him into
the gulf of vice, are a whit less dangerous or fearful than the
universally execrated disposition which impels him to plunge a dagger
into his own heart, or to bury it in the bosom of his fellow-creature.
On the contrary, they seem calculated to produce even greater
mischief, and, therefore, are more worthy of general deprecation, in
the same degree that a secret enemy is more deserving of universal
abhorrence than an avowed one: the one stands forth with an open
defiance, and a weapon drawn before the eyes of his victim, who may
save himself by flight or conflict--the other "smiles, and smiles, and
murders while he smiles."

How many noble beings have we known, destroyed utterly by the
disposition to what is vulgarly called good-fellowship!--in how many
instances have we known splendid talents, high love of moral
rectitude, nay, even strong religious principles, strangled by the
social feelings! At first, doubtless, there was but a slight
dereliction of duty, mourned for sincerely, and punished by severe
remorse; but, gradually, and with insidious motion, the victim
revolved in a wider sphere, and more remote from the orbit of virtue,
until, at length, escaping entirely from the attraction which had held
him in the just path, he fell, with headlong and irresistible
velocity, into the shapeless void of vice--the dark chaos of crime.

Our heart sickens as we pass in review before us the numbers of our
early friends who have run this terrific career, who now fill timeless
graves, or are yet in the land of existence, bearing about in their
bosoms a living hell--whose hearts are already sepulchres. And, but
that we thought the relation we are about to deliver may be of service
to some who, already standing on the brink, are not fully aware of
their danger--but that we conceived the tale of talent, generosity,
and worth, miserably destroyed by the unregulated social feelings, may
arrest some kindred spirit in its path to unanticipated misery--we
should yield to the impulse which urges us to fling down our pen, and
give ourselves up to sorrow for the departed.

William Riddell was the only son of a shepherd, who dwelt upon the
moorlands that overhang one of the tributaries of the Tweed. The old
man was one of those charact