Mankind are ignorant enough, Heaven knows, both in the mass, about general interests, and individually, about the things which belong to their peace: but of all mortals, none perhaps are so awfully self-deluded as the unamiable. They do not, any more than others, sin for the sake of sinning; but the amount of woe caused by their selfish unconsciousness is such as may well make their weakness an equivalent for other men's gravest crimes. There is a great diversity of hiding-places for their consciences--many mansions in the dim prison of discontent: but it may be doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal day, there will be revealed a lower deep than the hell which they have made. They, perhaps, are the only order of evil ones who suffer hell without seeing and knowing that it is hell. But they are under a heavier curse even than this; they inflict torments, second only to their own, with an unconsciousness almost worthy of spirits of light. While they complacently conclude themselves the victims of others, or pronounce, inwardly or aloud, that they are too singular, or too refined, for common appreciation, they are putting in motion an enginery of torture whose aspect will one day blast their minds' sight. The dumb groans of their victims will sooner or later return upon their ears from the depths of the heaven, to which the sorrows of men daily ascend. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution of the unamiable, if all that happens be indeed for eternity, if there be indeed a record--an impress on some one or other human spirit--of every chilling frown, of every querulous tone, of every bitter jest, of every insulting word--of all abuses of that tremendous power which mind has over mind. The throbbing pulses, the quivering nerves, the wrung hearts, that surround the unamiable--what a cloud of witnesses is here! and what plea shall avail against them? The terror of innocents who should know no fear--the vindictive emotions of dependants who dare not complain--the faintness of heart of life-long companions--the anguish of those who love--the unholy exultation of those who hate,--what an array of judges is here! and where can appeal be lodged against their sentence? Is pride of singularity a rational plea? Is super-refinement, or circumstance of God, or uncongeniality in man, a sufficient ground of appeal, when the refinement of one is a grace granted for the luxury of all, when circumstance is given to be conquered, and uncongeniality is appointed for discipline? The sensualist has brutified the seraphic nature with which he was endowed. The depredator has intercepted the rewards of toil, and marred the image of justice, and dimmed the lustre of faith in men's minds. The imperial tyrant has invoked a whirlwind, to lay waste, for an hour of God's eternal year, some region of society. But the unamiable--the domestic torturer--has heaped wrong upon wrong, and woe upon woe, through the