Clarke; and there are certain cases in which it is difficult not to admit it, especially when the question of the demoniacs is considered. Nor is there any thing that shocks us in supposing this to be possible for the body, and the mind also, as depending upon the bodily organs.—But that the moral being, the soul itself, the life of life, the immortal part, should appear, as so often it undoubtedly does, to be thus possessed, this indeed is of all mysterious things the darkest. For a disposition thus evil in its nature it almost seems as if there could be no hope. On the other hand there is no security in a good one, if the support of good principles, (that is to say, of religion—of christian faith—) be wanting. It may be soured by misfortunes, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose “all its original brightness.” School friendships arise out of sympathy of disposition at an age when the natural disposition is under little controul and less disguise; and there are reasons enough, of a less melancholy kind than Cowper contemplated, why so few of these blossoms set, and of those which afford a promise of fruit, why so small a proportion should bring it to maturity. “The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie;”[2] and even when not thus dissolved, the mutual attachment which in boyhood is continually strengthened by similarity of circumstance and pursuits, dies a natural death in most cases when that similarity ceases. If one goes north in the intellectual bearings of his course in life, and the other south, they will at last be far as the poles asunder. If their pursuits are altogether different, and their opinions repugnant, in the first case they cease to think of each other with any warm interest; in the second, if they think of each other at all, it is with an uncomfortable feeling, and a painful sense of change. [Footnote 2: SHAKESPEAR.] The way in which too many ordinary minds are worsened by the mere course of time is finely delineated by Landor, in some verses which he designed as an imitation, not of a particular passage in a favourite Greek author, but of his manner and style of thought.