ready-it is safe, and it is ample:-how then should it be foregone? He has only to mutter perdition-and the stab is given. A murky revenge analogous to this of the religionist has been common among barbarous and superstitious hordes.-The malign sorcerer-intimate of demons, thinking himself full fraught with venom borrowed from the infernal world, is well content to dart a look only at his enemy; sure that the mere glance of the evil eye of hatred would in due time take effect- that the florid cheek must fade-the strength decay, and the victim fall.

Yet Conscience claims her hour with all men, even the most debauched; and it must especially be so with those whose habits make them conversant with the divine rule of morality. Such, although every day indulging the darkest malignity, are continually reading that "whosoever hateth his brother is not of God." They may abstain from distinctly bringing the criterion home upon themselves; and yet are fain to have recourse to pleas that are intended to parry the condemnatory inference from the rule. The pretexts of zeal are many :—and if, as we have seen, tormentors, murderers, devastators of kingdoms, can quote chapter and verse in justification of their barbarities, those who only curse, but do not kill their opponents, may easily do the same.

Many, as is evident from the peculiar character

of their devotional sentiments, have taken a somewhat more circuitous, but a still more effectual method for lulling conscience, and for turning aside from themselves the rules of charity. This method has been (alas the inconsistencies of human nature!) so to cherish the fervours of piety, and so to straiten the pattern of their external behaviour, as should seem to remove all suspicion of the genuineness and elevation of their personal religion. By amassing to a prodigious height the evidences of sanctity, a commensurate licence has been obtained for the indulgence of hideous passions. A man who every day ascends the mount of ecstasy, and holds intimate converse with heaven, surely should not be called in question, when he comes down to earth, on account of an inexorable or vindictive temper! Examples of this very sort are abundant (and some have already been referred to) on the pages of Romish pietism; and we may find on the calendar men whose breath was pestilence, whose every word was a fiery bolt, persuading themselves and their admirers that they enjoyed celestial favours, such as Gabriel and Michael might envy! To assume that the accident of a protestant creed quite excludes any parallel enormity, were indeed to be blind. What we are now speaking of ishuman nature, and the mysteries of its delusions;-not the question of transubstantiation, or of the pope's pretensions.

Among those who make themselves conspicuous as the chiefs and leaders of the fanaticism of dogmas and creeds, many marked distinctions, arising from natural temper, might be pointed out; but it must suffice here to mention the two orders of character that stand foremost. These are-The Despotic and the Ambitious.

There have been Bajazets and Zingis Khans on the field where the quill is the only weapon that is wielded. But how difficult is it to analyse satisfactorily the emotions that constitute the lust of power where nothing that is secular or tangible nothing that is intelligibly advantageous-nothing that makes a man richer or better, is to spring from the attainment of his purpose! While the earlier and immature stages of a dominant passion retain many alliances with other motives, and are found to be mixed up with various ingredients, so as to afford several points of connexion, whence they may easily be traced to their sources, and brought to view; it is the characteristic of the last stage of such passions that, having let go every such alliance, they become inexplicable, and defy scrutiny-a simple element admits of no analysis. The passion that has at length made itself exclusive master of the breast, closes the avenues, and enjoys its solitude. Thus it is with avarice. So long as any one purpose for which money avails is kept in view, we may conceive of the miser's avidity; but after every ordinary

desire has been excluded and renounced, the love of hoarding can be described only as an insanity, to which it is vain to apply the principles of reason. When the wretch, shutting out the pleasures of life, its pride, and its hopes, clasps his shapeless bags as a sovereign good-we lose hold of him-the last link of human sympathy is snapt, and he seems to go adrift from his species.

A similar mystery belongs to the lust of power in those cases where it prevails exclusively of the hope of secular or palpable benefits accruing to the individual. The passion which leads a man to subjugate kingdoms is intelligible; but how shall we explain the feeling that makes a man pant to bring the realms of mind under bondage, and when it is not himself that is to enjoy the homage of the vanquished world? Now it is a curious fact, that the individuals who have exhibited in the extremest degree this species of insatiable arrogance have themselves occupied a subaltern position in the hierarchy or polity to which they rendered their services; and have not shewn any very active personal ambition, as if the attainment of visible supremacy had been their ultimate motive.

Minds in an eminent degree fervent and energetic never occupy the common ground of vulgar interests:-their native region is a higher one-or a lower; and although they may seem to be busy, and perhaps are so,

with the ordinary concerns that fall under their management, these palpable elements are but so many ciphers of a more important intellectual process that is going on :-the matters handled are dice, by means of which a great game is played. Such spirits, conversing with the ideal rather than with the actual world, see every thing in symbol. The revolutions and advancements, the perils or the increase of a hierarchy, mean, to such, more than can be given account of in common modes of computation. While the poet descries on the face of nature the types of a world of unsullied beauty, and while the metaphysician gathers from the things around him nothing but abstract truth, there is a class of men whose conceptions of ideal perfection turn upon order-government, and the unison of wills. Add to this peculiar intellectual taste a haughty asperity of temper, and bring the individual to his position within some vast edifice of despotism; and he will exhibit the singular passion we are speaking of.-Or shall we adduce an actual instance, and name the learned, irascible, dogmatic Jerom? All his great merits duly admitted; and in truth Jerom stands

The power of miracles was not reckoned among this saint's endowments, and it is singular that few men of superior understanding made any boast of the sort. Erasmus balances the disparagement ingeniously:-Quod si cui nihil absque miraculorum portentis placere potest, is legat Hieronymianos libros, in quibus tot penè miracula sunt, quod sententiæ. No attention is due to a spurious Life of Jerom, in which miraculous powers are largely claimed for him.