virtues, and not more so to religion and true friendship, than to a disinterested patriotism. Besides, in well informed and well disposed communities, nothing is more common than to overrate the talents, and real efficiency of bad men. We see it every where; for even in a number of brothers, if there is one of them who gives himself up to vicious and profligate courses, he almost always passes for the genius of the family. We judge a man's power to do good by what we see of his power to do evil; not reflecting that the latter is a very vulgar accomplishment, which seldom implies even so much as the perversion of a great mind. There is the more occasion that topics like these should be pressed in a government like ours, as it is essentially popular, and on this account more likely to be carried away by qualities that are merely striking and popular, in contradistinction to such as are solid and useful. If there is any one mark admitted by all to be peculiarly indicative of real greatness of mind, it is originality; nor do we object to this criterion when properly applied. But it unfortunately happens, that unprincipled men, not having the least particle of real originality, may easily gain a reputation for in the popular mind merely by being, or affecting to be singular in their ways of thinking and acting. Let a man of nothing more than ordinary powers strike away from the common track, advance a few startling paradoxes, and defend them with as much plausibility as he can, and straightway he becomes, in the eyes of the million at least, a wonderful genius.