Those who, actuated by a spirit in some humble resemblance to his, have entered deeply into the state of the people, such as it is found in our own nation, have often been appalled at the spectacle disclosed to them. They have been astonished to think, what _can_ have been the direction, while successive ages have passed away, of so many thousands of acute and vigilant mental eyes, that so dreadful a sight should scarcely have been descried. They have been aware that in describing it as they actually saw it, they would be regarded by some as gloomy fanatics, tinctured with insanity by the influence of some austere creed; and that others, of kinder nature, but whose sensibility has more of self-indulging refinement than tendency to active benevolence, would almost wish that so revolting an exhibition had never been made, though the fact be actually so. There may have been moments when they themselves have experienced a temporary recoil of their benevolent zeal, under the impression at once of the immensity of the evil, so defying the feebleness of their remedial means and efforts, and of its noisome quality. At times, the rudeness of the subjects, and perhaps the ungracious reception and thankless requital of their disinterested labors, aggravating the general feeling of the miserableness (so to express it) of seeing so much misery, have lent seduction to the temptations to ease and self-indulgence. Why should they, just _they_ of all men, condemn themselves to dwell so much in the most dreary climate of the moral world, when they could perhaps have taken their almost constant abode in a little elysium of elegant knowledge, taste, and refined society? Then was the time to revert to the example of Him "who, though he was rich, for our sakes became poor." Or, again, they may have been betrayed to indulge too long in the bitter mood of thinking, how entirely the higher and more amply furnished powers leave such generous designs to proceed as they can, in the mere strength of private individual exertion. And they may have yielded to depressive feelings after the fervor of indignant ones; for such indignation, unless qualified by the purest principle--unless it be the "anger that sins not"--is very apt, when it cools, to settle into misanthropic despondency. It is as if (they have said) armies and giants would stand aloof to amuse themselves, while we are to be committed and abandoned in the ceaseless, unavailable toil of a conflict, which these armies and giants have no business even to exist as such but for the very purpose of waging. We are, if we will,--and if we will we may let it alone--to try to effect in diminutive pieces, and detached local efforts, a little share of that, to the accomplishment of which the greatest human force on earth might be applied on system, and to the widest compass. So they have said, perhaps, and been tempted to leave their object to its destiny.