According to the apologue, every man carries on his back a satchel, in which are deposited his infirmities and vices, and which, though thus concealed from his own eyes, lies very invitingly open to the inspection of his friends. Not satisfied with this exposure of foibles, there are some good-natured moralists, who would dive deeper into the secrets of their neighbours, and who lament, with the old heathen metaphysician, that heaven had not clapped windows into their breasts, so that they might detect even the iniquity of thoughts. This regret may be avoided by all who are willing to satisfy curiosity at their own expense; for heaven has fitted most bosoms with private loopholes, through which each man may survey at his leisure the workings of his own spirit. A peep through the secret casement will disclose something startling, if not humbling, to many, who, in the vanity of good works, are disposed to uplift themselves above their fellows;--such, perhaps, as rational principles, and even kindly feelings, taking their hue from 'that smooth-faced gentleman,'--that biassing spirit which is more comprehensively expressed in Shakespeare's phrase of _Commodity_ than in the more familiar one of Interest; for it is true of us all, that virtues are sometimes nothing but passions in disguise, and that reason has a marvellous facility in acquiring the tones of worldly-wisdom. If the mere grovelling villain,--the robber, assassin, or slayer of man's peace,--can find some such spectacle near to his heart as the surgeon's knife exposes in the breast of a cankered corse, what may _he_ detect, whose sublimer villany has led, or is leading him, to distinction, upon a highway paved with the miseries of mankind? Methinks, the breast of the ambitious man is a labyrinth of some such caverns as perforate the bowels of a volcano, in whose depths are lost all the petty details of crime, committed, or meditated,--in which there is no light but that which bubbles up from the lava of the vast passion,--and in which there is even no grandeur, that has not arisen from convulsions the most disorganizing and unnatural. Such a heart is, at least to the limited ken of others, a chaos,--but a chaos from which he who imbosoms it, and who alone can understand it, calls up,--less like a god than a demon,--the evil elements, which create the lurid sphere his greatness. In the bosom of the Conquistador there was a corner, into which the blaze of ambition had not yet penetrated, and where the common passions of our nature were left to rage and struggle as in the heart of a meaner mortal. As he looked therein, he gave himself up to thoughts which devoured him, while his countenance betrayed, for a time at least, nothing beyond such lassitude and faintness as may have characterized the Spartan boy, while bleeding under the fangs of the beast he concealed in his bosom.