The state of mind into which a man is brought who is the lonely inhabitant of his own small world, and who is only visited by certain regular visitors, all addressing themselves to him individually and personally, as the object of their particular solicitude—we believe in most cases to have very little promise in it, and very little of solid foundation. A strange absorbing selfishness—a spiritual egotism and vanity, real or assumed—is the first result. It is most remarkable to observe, in the cases of murderers who become this kind of object of interest, when they are at last consigned to the condemned cell, how the rule is (of course there are exceptions,) that the murdered person disappears from the stage of their thoughts, except as a part of their own important story; and how they occupy the whole scene. _I_ did this, _I_ feel that, _I_ confide in the mercy of Heaven being extended to _me_; this is the autograph of _me_, the unfortunate and unhappy; in my childhood I was so and so; in my youth I did such a thing, to which I attribute my downfall—not this thing of basely and barbarously defacing the image of my Creator, and sending an immortal soul into eternity without a moment’s warning, but something else of a venial kind that many unpunished people do. I don’t want the forgiveness of this foully murdered person’s bereaved wife, husband, brother, sister, child, friend; I don’t ask for it, I don’t care for it. I make no enquiry of the clergyman concerning the salvation of that murdered person’s soul; _mine_ is the matter; and I am almost happy that I came here, as to the gate of Paradise. ‘I never liked him,’ said the repentant Mr. Manning, false of heart to the last, calling a crowbar by a milder name, to lessen the cowardly horror of it, ‘and I beat in his skull with the ripping chisel.’ I am going to bliss, exclaims the same authority, in effect. Where my victim went to, is not my business at all. Now, GOD forbid that we, unworthily believing in the Redeemer, should shut out hope, or even humble trustfulness, from any criminal at that dread pass; but, it is not in us to call this state of mind repentance.