There are persons, and of grave judgments too, who verily believe that the quantity of conscience amongst mankind is not worth speaking of, and treat of human actions as entirely independent of it. And this fault honest Montaigne finds with Guicciardini:--"I have also," says he, "observed this in him, that of so many persons and so many effects, so many motives and so many counsels as he judges of, he never attributes any one of them to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all those were utterly extinct in the world; and of all the actions, however brave an outward show they make, he always throws the cause and motive upon some vicious occasion, or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some one produced by the way of reason. No corruption could so universally have affected men, that some of them would not have escaped the contagion, which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious; from whence it might happen that he judged other men by himself." You, Eusebius, will be perfectly of Montaigne's opinion. We would rather trust that there are few in whom this moral principle has no vitality whatever. The wayside beggar, when he divides his meal--which, perhaps, he has stolen--with his dog, acts from its kind impulse; and see how uncharitable I am at my first impulse, to suppose, to suggest that the meal is stolen--so ready are we to steal away virtues, one after the other, and in our judgments to be thieves upon a large scale. And so a better feeling pricks me to charity. I doubt if we ought even to say that the parliamentary reprobate, who openly confessed "that he could not afford to keep a conscience," had none--he was but dead to some of its motions. If it were not that it must be something annexed to an immortal condition, would you not, Eusebius, say that the beggar's dog conscientiously makes his return of service and gratitude for the scraps thrown to him? See him by the gipsies' tent: how safely can the infant children be left to his sole care by the roadside! It is a beautiful sight to see the sagacious, the faithful creature, watching while they sleep, and lying upon the outer fold of the blanket that enwraps them. Has he not a sense of duty--a sort of bastard conscience? And what is truly wonderful, is, that animals have often a sense of duty against their instincts. If it be said that they act through fear of punishment, it is a punishment their instincts would teach them to avoid; and, after all, this fear of punishment may be a mighty ingredient in most men's consciences. We learn that immense numbers of ducks are reared by that part of the Chinese population who spend their lives in boats upon the rivers; and these birds, salted and dried, form one of the chief articles of diet in the celestial land. They are kept in large cages or crates, from which, in the morning, they are sent forth to seek their food upon the river