dred,
for instance,--taken promiscuously, should be able to write memoirs of
themselves so clear and perfect as to explain, to your discernment at
least, the entire process by which their minds have attained their
present state, recounting all the most impressive circumstances. If they
should read these memoirs to you in succession, while your benevolence,
and the moral principles according to which you felt and estimated,
were kept at the highest pitch, you would often, during the disclosure,
regret to observe how many things may be the causes of irretrievable
mischief. 'Why is the path of life,' you would say, 'so haunted as if
with evil spirits of every diversity of noxious agency, some of which
may patiently accompany, or others of which may suddenly cross, the
unfortunate wanderer?' And you would regret to observe into how many
forms of intellectual and moral perversion the human mind readily yields
itself to be modified.

* * * * *

"'I compassionate you,' would, in a very benevolent hour, be your
language to the wealthy, unfeeling _tyrant of a family and a
neighborhood_, who seeks, in the overawed timidity and unretaliated
injuries of the unfortunate beings within his power, the gratification
that should have been sought in their affections. Unless you had brought
into the world some extraordinary refractoriness to the influence of
evil, the process that you have undergone could not easily fail of being
efficacious. If your parents idolized their own importance in their
son so much that they never opposed your inclinations themselves nor
permitted it to be done by any subject to their authority,--if the
humble companion, sometimes summoned to the honor of amusing you, bore
your caprices and insolence with the meekness without which he had
lost his enviable privilege,--if you could despoil the garden of some
nameless dependent neighbor of the carefully reared flowers, and torment
his little dog or cat, without his daring to punish you or to appeal
to your infatuated parents,--if aged men addressed you in a submissive
tone, and with the appellation of 'Sir,' and their aged wives uttered
their wonder at your condescension, and pushed their grandchildren away
from around the fire for your sake, if you happened, though with the
strut of pertness, and your hat on your head, to enter one of their
cottages, perhaps to express your contempt of the homely dwelling,
furniture, and fare,--if,