d
murder, or the violence of the aggrieved the black offence of a wilful
criminal. Wolfe, therefore, soon obtained a release from the confinement
to which he had been at first committed; and with a temper still more
exasperated by the evident disposition of his auditors to have treated
him, had it been possible, with the utmost rigour, he returned to
companions well calculated by their converse and bent of mind to inflame
the fester of his moral constitution.

It happens generally that men very vehement in any particular opinion
choose their friends, not for a general similarity of character, but
in proportion to their mutual congeniality of sentiment upon that
particular opinion; it happens, also, that those most audibly violent,
if we may so speak, upon any opinion, moral or political, are rarely the
wisest or the purest of their party. Those with whom Wolfe was
intimate were men who shared none of the nobler characteristics of the
republican; still less did they participate in or even comprehend the
enlightened and benevolent views for which the wise and great men of
that sect--a sect to which all philanthropy is, perhaps too fondly,
inclined to lean--have been so conspicuously eminent. On the contrary,
Wolfe's comrades, without education and consequently without principle,
had been driven to disaffection by desperate fortunes and ruined
reputations acting upon minds polluted by the ignorance and hardened
among the dross of the populace. But the worst can by constant
intercourse corrupt the best; and the barriers of good and evil, often
confused in Wolfe's mind by the blindness of his passions, seemed, as
his intercourse with these lawless and ruffian associates thickened, to
be at last utterly broken down and swept away.

Unhappily too--soon after Wolfe's return to London--the popular
irritation showed itself in mobs, perhaps rather to be termed disorderly
than seditious. The ministers, however, thought otherwise; the military
were summoned, and much injury, resulting, it is to be hoped, from
accident, not design, ensued to many of the persons assembled. Some
were severely wounded by the swords of the soldiers; others maimed and
trampled upon by the horses, which shared the agitation or irritability
of their riders; and a few, among whom were two women and three
children, lost their lives. Wolfe had been one of the crowd; and
the scene, melancholy as it really was, and appearing to his temper
unredeemed and inexcu