We thus get to one of the secrets of this man's character. The passions are said to occur in opposite phases--strong loves, and strong hatreds, and so forth; but there is one which nature, in love, has reserved, pure, solitary, and unchangeable, without counterpart to dim its lustre, or antagonist to neutralise its effect, and that is _pity_. This man wanted pity. If we were fanciful, we might here go with the gentle poets, who tell us, in their way, that, like the dew-drop which falls in the evening, and shines equally clear on the deadly nightshade and the rose, it solaces virtue in adversity, without scorning sin in the pains of retribution. If, in our analysis of man's character, we find not his heart, as the fire-opal, enclosing one of nature's tears, we may throw the crucible aside, extinguish the fire, and cast the _caput mortuum_ to the dogs; and yet dogs have pity. We have found, even already, enough to lead us to another clue. He possessed radical cunning, the greatest and most insuperable of all the obstacles to moral and religious emendation. Other evils only hang about the heart, but this, the true gift of the devil, is the very blood of the organ. We are, then, led to suspect him of religious hypocrisy. If we were not told there is hope for all, we might surely say that the advent of the Spirit of grace is possible in every case but that of hypocrisy veiled by religion; yea, the creature cursed with this vice, Faith views in the distance as an impossibility, and flies past in despair, to try her persuasions on the _honest_ sinner.