Most of our desires, although natural, are determined as to their particular direction by the operation of circumstances--take for example the desire for society. There is no doubt that this is a natural instinctive desire; man is certainly a gregarious animal; he delights in intercourse with fellow-man; solitude is at war with the condition of his nature, and so strong is his desire for society, that if man be deprived of intercourse with man, he will make companions of brutes and reptiles themselves. Horses, dogs, cats, even spiders and rats, have become his very dear associates in his solitary condition. And yet, under the operation of reason, imagination, and the passions, together with that endless variety of character which we find in the human family, this desire is directed to particular persons and particular circles. We may shun the society of A and B--we may court that of C and D--and indeed, under the very severe pressure of calamity, when all our hopes and our darling schemes of ambition and aggrandizement are blasted forever, by the perfidious machinations and wily projects of those very individuals whom we had fondly called our friends, there is an almost irresistible tendency in the mind, at such a melancholy crisis, to indulge the gloomy feeling of misanthropy, and plunge into the depth of solitude, where we may escape the persecution and treachery of a dissembling world. Thus do we find circumstances controling, directing, and sometimes almost exterminating our natural passions and propensities.