Again Hamish read the article from beginning to end. Read, and re-read it. It was as if the lines possessed the fatal fascination of the basilisk, attracting him against his will. He writhed under the executioner's knife, while he submitted to it. The book was a good and brilliant work, betraying its genius in every line, well conceived, well plotted, ably written. It was one of those that take the whole imagination of the reader captive; one that a man is all the better for reading, and rises up from with a subdued spirit, hushed breath, and a glowing heart. While enchaining man's deepest interest, it yet insensibly led his thoughts to Heaven. Simple though it was in its pure Saxon diction, its sentiments were noble, generous, and exalted. Not a thought was there to offend, not a line that, for its parity, might not have been placed in the hands of his child. Modest, as all gifted with true genius are, yet possessing (for that must always be), a latent consciousness of his great power, Hamish had looked forward for success to his book, as surely as he looked for Heaven. That it could be a failure, he had simply never thought of; that it should be badly received, ridiculed, condemned, written down, had not entered his imagination. Had he been told such might be the result, he would have quietly answered that it was impossible. In all matters where the minds and feelings, the inward, silent hopes and fears, are deeply touched, it cannot be but that we are sensitively alive to the opinions of our fellow men, and swayed by their judgment. As Hamish Channing read and re-read, learning the cruel sentences almost by rote, his heart failed within him. For the time being, he thought he must have erred in supposing the book so good; that it must be a foolish and mistaken book, deserving only of their sharp criticism; and a sense of humiliation, than which nothing could be more intensely painful, took possession of his spirit. But the belief could not remain. The mood changed again. The book resumed nearly its estimated place in his mind, and the sense of humiliation was superseded by the smarting conviction of cruel injustice. What had he or his book done that they should be so reviled? "Lord, thou knowest all things! surely I have not deserved this!" irrepressibly broke from the depths of his anguish.