Suppose now the case of two individuals, of equal refinement, intellect, and sensibility, (save that in one the edge of all these qualities must have been blunted by moral defection) nay--that by making the parallel closer, the contrast may be more obvious--suppose them to be brothers. In early life they both were trained in the path of moral rectitude, from which the one has never swerved, but the other has been constantly making wider and wider deviations. Place them now in the situation of the poet, and let them read these lines. The image recalled, the object of their contemplation is the same--their early associations are the same. But the effect is far different. The conviction is present with one, that he has persevered in that course, which his mother toiled and wept to place him in, and in pleased sadness he will repeat with Cowper, ‘And while the wings of Fancy still are free, And I can view this mimic show of thee, Time has but half succeeded in his theft-- Thyself removed, thy power to soothe me left.’ The other is melancholy, but his is the melancholy of remorse. Each vivid recollection but ‘adds hot instance to the gushing tear,’ and all that soothed his brother, but protracts _his_ pain. He feels in all its force the solemn truth, so quaintly expressed by the old dramatist, Suckling: ‘Our sins, like to our shadows When our day is in its glory, scarce appeared: Towards our evening how great and monstrous They are!’ His feelings are sympathetically described by Byron: ‘So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So withers the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.’ _Nescio._ “You have quoted Byron, rather unfortunately for your argument, I think, Tristo. For he is an instance of the existence of high poetic power, in a mind depraved by the baseness of his moral sentiments.”