To delineate the characters and passions of men, under the semblance of Lions, Tigers, Wolves, and Foxes, is not so extravagant a fiction as it may at first sight seem: for the innocent and inexperienced will find, when they engage in the busy scenes of the world, that they will have to deal with men of dispositions not unlike those animals; and that their utmost vigilance will be required to guard against their violence or machinations. In attempting to form an estimate of the characters of mankind, many gradations and shades will be found between the two extremes of virtue and vice. The philanthropist views with feelings of benevolence the wavering balance, and adds those he finds on the confines, to the number of the virtuous; while the misanthrope, with gloomy malignity, endeavours to include within the circle of vice, those who are standing upon the ill-defined line of division, and thus swells the number of the bad. Both observe with pain, that great numbers exist, whose whole lives seem to be spent in disfiguring the beautiful order which might otherwise reign in society, regardless of the misery which their wickedness scatters around them. They see men, who suffer their bad passions and gross appetites to be the sole rule of their conduct; and whether these shew themselves in an inordinate ambition, a thirst after false glory, or an insatiable avarice, their consequences are pernicious, and diffuse evil, distress, and ruin among mankind, in proportion to the extent to which their baneful influence reaches. The misanthrope, in contemplating the scene of mischief and disorder, is apt to arraign the wisdom and justice of Providence for permitting it to exist; but the philanthropist views it with a more extended range of vision; and while he laments the evil, he attributes the apparent want of human feelings in the actors, to an early perversion of intellect, or to a stifling of the reasoning power given by the Great Creator to man for his guide, and without which he is the worst animal in the creation, a mere two-legged Tiger. Upon the childhood and youth of such men, the great truth taught by the inspired and wisest writers of all ages, that “no life can be pleasing to God which is not useful to man,” has not been sufficiently impressed, or probably the energy with which they pursue their wicked career might have been led into a different course, and instead of the scourges, they would have been the benefactors of mankind.