Whoever has had an opportunity of knowing the state of society and the character of man in retirement, must be aware that the amazing disparity subsisting between the extremes of rusticity and of polished life arises far less from original disproportions of capacity than from the accidental circumstances which attach to the two conditions. Education has a tendency to remove these differences, to elevate the inferior classes of society from their degradation, to raise them in the scale of being and to unite man to man: but still more important effects result from religion, which, by fixing the thoughts on holy and heavenly objects, and firing the breast with incessant ardour in the pursuit of them, advances the character to a dignity otherwise unattainable. How much humble piety has bloomed in the by-paths of life far from the crowded highway of the world, amidst the recesses of privacy! How often has the beauty of holiness adorned the most misshapen, or otherwise unattractive exterior! How many great and pious individuals have occupied the vale of poverty, the objects of divine approbation and of angelic joy; who, under different circumstances, might have been ornaments of the political world, or lights in the church of God; and will be pillars for ever in the celestial temple! These dispensations of Providence are analogous to certain arrangements in nature. How many showers descend, and how many vegetable productions grow in barren wildernesses! It is not till after ages of research that a few species and varieties have been discovered; and it may be questioned whether an equal, if not a far greater number, still exist in the unfrequented solitudes of creation, which science may not visit for centuries yet to come: and of those which are at present known, a few only of their qualities, and the uses for which they were formed, have been ascertained. To pronounce a condemnatory sentence upon that wisdom which assigned them their places, merely on account of our incapacity to discover their precise destination, would be presumptuous and impious in the extreme; nor would it be less so to contemn the unsearchable mysteries of Providence, whose arrangements surpass the comprehension and confound the inquiries of man.