Alas, Eusebius, that any thing should take the name of this nice sense that is not replete with goodness, that is not the true _ductor substantium_! The prophet of an evil which wounds his very soul will take offence if it come not to pass and spare not. Was not Jonah grieved that the whole city was not destroyed as he had said? That nice and inner sense was more ingenious on the side of bold justice, than prodigal to mercy; and so had he not "a conscience void of offence;" and thus this honourable feeling not always acts unfettered, but is intercepted and hurried on, spite of itself, into courses of action in which there is too much of passion, and, plunging into error with this outward violence, is forced upon ingenious defences. The story of Piso is in point. He thought to act the conscientious judge, when he condemned the soldier to death who had returned from forage without his companion, under the impression that he had killed him; but as he is upon the point of execution, the man supposed to have been murdered returns, all the soldiery present rejoice, and the executioner brings them both to the presence of Piso. And what did the conscientious Piso? His conscience would not so let him put by justice; so, with a surprising ingenuity of that nice faculty in its delirium, he orders execution upon all three--the first soldier, because he had been condemned--the second, who had lost his way, because he was the cause of his companion's death--and the executioner, because he had disobeyed his orders. He had but to pretend to be greatly grieved at his vagary, to have the act lauded as an instance of Roman virtue. I look upon the famed Brutus, when he thought it a matter of conscience to witness, as well as order, his sons' execution, to have been a vain unfeeling fool or a madman. Let us have no prate about conscience proceeding from a hard heart; these are frightful notions when they become infectious. A handful of such madmen are enough, if allowed to have their way, to enact the horrors of a French Revolution. All this you know, Eusebius, better than I do, and will knit your brows at this too serious vein of thought. I will come, therefore, a little nearer our common homes. You shall have a scene from domestic life, as I had it the other day, from a lady with whom I was conversing upon this subject, who tells me it is a veritable fact, and took place some seventy years back. "It will want its true power," said my friend, "because that one solitary trait could give you no idea of the rich humour of the lady, the subject of this incident--her simplicity, shrewdness, art, ignorance, quickness, mischief, made lovely by exceeding beauty, and a most amusing consciousness of it. Seventy years ago, too, it happened--there are no such ladies in the better ranks of society now. She lived at Margate. It came to pass that the topping upholsterer there got a new-shaped chest of drawers from London--the very first that had appeared in Margate--and