Women are inclined to fall in love with priests and physicians, because of the help and comfort they derive from both in perilous moral and physical maladies. They believe in the presence of real pity, real sympathy, where the tone and look of each have become merely habitual and conventional,—I may say professional. On the other hand, women are inclined to fall in love with criminal and miserable men out of the pity which in our sex is akin to love, and out of the power of bestowing comfort or love. “Car les femmes out un instinct céleste pour le malheur.” So, in the first instance, they love from gratitude or faith; in the last, from compassion or hope. [Illustration] 58. “Men of all countries,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “appear to be more alike in their best qualities than the pride of civilisation would be willing to allow.” And in their _worst_. The distinction between savage and civilised humanity lies not in the _qualities_, but the _habits_. 59. Coleridge notices “the increase in modern times of vicious associations with things in themselves indifferent,” as a sign of unhealthiness in taste, in feeling, in conscience. The truth of this remark is particularly illustrated in the French literature of the last century. [Illustration] 60. “And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss and unpayable, but the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates a revolution in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or a style of living, and allows the formation of new influences that prove of the first importance during the next years.”—_Emerson._ [Illustration] 61. Religion, in its general sense, is properly the comprehension and acknowledgment of an unseen spiritual power and the soul’s allegiance to it; and CHRISTIANITY, in its particular sense, is the comprehension and appreciation of the personal character of Christ, and the heart’s allegiance to that. [Illustration] 62. Avarice is to the intellect what _sensuality_ is to the morals. It is an intellectual form of sensuality, inasmuch as it is the passion for the acquisition, the enjoyment in the possession, of a palpable, tangible, selfish pleasure; and it would have the same tendency to unspiritualise, to degrade, and to harden the higher faculties that a course of grosser sensualism would have to corrupt the lower faculties. Both dull the edge of all that is fine and tender within us. [Illustration] 63.