“‘Still, however,’ said Asem, ‘the inhabitants must be happy; each is contented with his own possessions, nor avariciously endeavours to heap up more than is necessary for his own subsistence; each has, therefore, leisure for pitying those that stand in need of his compassion.’ He had scarcely spoken when his ears were assaulted by the lamentations of a wretch who sat by the way-side, and, in the most deplorable distress, seemed gently to murmur at his own misery. Asem immediately ran to his relief, and found him in the last stage of a consumption. ‘Strange,’ cried the son of Adam, ‘that men who are free from vice should thus suffer so much misery without relief!’—‘Be not surprised,’ said the wretch who was dying; ‘would it not be the utmost injustice for beings who have only just sufficient to support themselves, and are content with a bare subsistence, to take it from their own mouths to put it into mine? They never are possessed of a single meal more than is necessary; and what is barely necessary cannot be dispensed with.’ ‘They should have been supplied with more than is necessary,’ cried Asem. ‘And yet I contradict my own opinion but a moment before: all is doubt, perplexity, and confusion.’” After some other attempts to find happiness in this world without vice, Asem exclaims—“Take me, O my Genius! back to that very world I have despised!” And hereupon the triumphant Genius, “assuming an air of terrible complacency, called all his thunders around him, and vanished in a whirlwind.” Asem found himself at the very place, and (with such rapidity had these scenes passed in review) almost at the very instant of time, in which the Genius had at first accosted him. “His right foot was still advanced to take the fatal plunge, nor had it been yet withdrawn.” Who would dare to contend with the _Genius of Conviction_?—who venture to prescribe laws of reasoning to so majestic a being,—one who walks upon the waters, calls his thunders about him, and has a whole subterranean world wherewith to demonstrate his theory of morals? Nevertheless, if we were quite sure that the Genius were out of hearing, we should be disposed to question whether he had ever framed an accurate definition of virtue. If, in a virtuous world, men must be chased by squirrels, and devoured by dogs, live in penury, and let their neighbours starve, either we, or the Genius of Conviction, have been in error all this time as to what virtue really _is_.