Such then was Morriss Heywood; in years a youth, a man in wisdom--the possessor of genius, health, reputation and beauty; his career as yet unchecked by a single obstacle--his hopes undimmed by the shadow of a fear. There resided at that period in the county of ---- an individual, who, by a long course of unremitting industry and the most grinding parsimony, together with less honest, if lawful means, had amassed an overgrown fortune; and having money at command, had contrived by lending it to the neighboring farmers, (generally improvident men,) and exacting high interest for its use, taking mortgages on their estates as security, to make himself the real if not nominal owner of half the landed property of the county. Having it at his will at any moment to strip many of their possessions, he was vested with a power that (although in their secret hearts all men detested him, and execrated his very name,) challenged opinion, and made dangerous as regarded him its public expression. It so happened that one of those gentlemen on whom his gripe was fixed, and whose debt, from an originally small sum, had swelled with usury until it covered his whole estate, had been a patron and valuable friend of this man, who was originally his overseer--had established him in the business with which he commenced his career, and aided him both with money and his name. It is a well established maxim, which hard experience has gathered from human intercourse, that you insure yourself an enemy when you bestow a benefit on a bad man. A noble mind may find an obligation burthensome, and be galled by the sense of dependence created by it. This feeling, however, does not destroy gratitude to the benefactor; but the mean and unprincipled hate those who give to them, from the consciousness that there is an utter dissimilarity of character between the giver and themselves. It grieves them that any should possess a virtue which they have not; and the performance of a good action, even although they themselves are its object, is gall and wormwood to their souls, from the secret knowledge that they are {108} incapable of doing the same. This violence of hatred which the wicked, without apparent motive, entertain for the good, is forcibly pourtrayed by Shakspeare, (nature's magician, who applied his "Open Sesame" to that dark cave the human heart, penetrated its recesses, and explored its most secret nooks,) when he makes Iago give as a reason for desiring the death of Cassio, "He hath a daily beauty in his life That makes me ugly"----