What happens thus to nations, befalls every day in private houses. When the friends of a gentleman brought to his notice the follies of his sons with many hints of their danger, he replied, that he knew so much mischief when he was a boy, and had turned out on the whole so successfully, that he was not alarmed by the dissipation of boys; ’twas dangerous water, but, he thought, they would soon touch bottom, and then swim to the top. This is bold practice, and there are many failures to a good escape. Yet one would say, that a good understanding would suffice as well as moral sensibility to keep one erect; the gratifications of the passions are so quickly seen to be damaging, and,—what men like least,—seriously lowering them in social rank. Then all talent sinks with character. "_Croyez moi, l’erreur aussi a son mérite_," said Voltaire. We see those who surmount, by dint of some egotism or infatuation, obstacles from which the prudent recoil. The right partisan is a heady narrow man, who, because he does not see many things, sees some one thing with heat and exaggeration, and, if he falls among other narrow men, or on objects which have a brief importance, as some trade or politics of the hour, he prefers it to the universe, and seems inspired, and a godsend to those who wish to magnify the matter, and carry a point. Better, certainly, if we could secure the strength and fire which rude, passionate men bring into society, quite clear of their vices. But who dares draw out the linchpin from the wagon-wheel? ’Tis so manifest, that there is no moral deformity, but is a good passion out of place; that there is no man who is not indebted to his foibles; that, according to the old oracle, "the Furies are the bonds of men;" that the poisons are our principal medicines, which kill the disease, and save the life. In the high prophetic phrase, _He causes the wrath of man to praise him_, and twists and wrenches our evil to our good. Shakspeare wrote,— "’Tis said, best men are moulded of their faults;"