There is yet a worse direction taken by this sensitiveness--both morally and in experience worse. Though our observation of life encourages hope, on the whole, to a boundless extent, both as to affairs and to human character, it teaches some truths about individual characters which are almost too much for our weakened condition. It may be absurd--it may be wrong--to be more afflicted about the faults and failings of the best and most beloved people, than about the vices and gross follies of a lower order of men; but such affliction is, to us, quite inevitable. It is not wholly irrational; for it is a melancholy sight to witness the encroachment of any bad habit of mind in those who should be outgrowing such bad habits, instead of being mastered by them. But we know it to be the common order of things that every man, even the best, carries about with him through life some fault or failing (the shadowy side of his brightest quality, if nothing worse), and that it is the rarest thing in the world to see any strong tendency overcome after the age of resolution, the youthful season of moral heroism, is past: yet, knowing this, it is not the less painful to witness it, with the clearness and strength with which the spectacle offers itself to us, on our post of observation. While working in the world, side by side with those whose doings we now contemplate, we were willing to be deceived in each particular instance; willing to expect that the judgment and action of those we loved and clung to would, in each case, be accordant with their best gifts and graces; and, however often disappointed, we made allowance for the known frailty, and inconsistently hoped it would be better next time. We now see too clearly to be deceived. With the discernment of love, and the power of leisure, we can accurately calculate the allowance to be made--we can precisely measure the obliquity beforehand--and save ourselves at least from disappointment. But there is no solace in this. There is more pain in the proof of the permanent character of faults (permanence including inevitable growth), than in perpetual new evidence of their existence; more sorrow in our prophetic power now than in our credulous weakness of old. The accurate readers of human character may be admired and envied for their infallible knowledge of how men will think and act; but, if they have a true heart-love for those whom they watch, they cannot much enjoy their power. If they have not love, neither can they be happy; so that it requires a penetrative knowledge indeed, into the ways of God as well as man, for such skill to be reconcileable with peace and with our human affections. It is a burdensome knowledge for us to wield, in our weakened condition, and one which it requires an ever-strengthening faith to convert into a nourisher of love.