"With a thirst for praise, which scarcely any applause could satisfy, Salvator united a quickness of perception that rendered him suspicious of pleasing, even at the moment he was most successful. A gaping mouth, a closing lid, a languid look, or an impatient hem! threw him into utter confusion, and deprived him of all presence of mind, of all power of concealing his mortification.... Abandoned by the idle and the great, whom his delightful talents had so long contributed to amuse, he voluntarily excluded himself from the few true and staunch friends who clung to him in his adversity, and shut himself up equally from all he loved and all he despised.... His reference to this journey is curious, as being illustrative of those high imaginations, and lofty and lonely feelings, in which lay all the secret of his peculiar genius: while his pantings after solitude, his vain repinings, exhibit the struggles of a mind divided between a natural love of repose and a factitious ambition for the world's notice and the _eclat_ of fame,--no unusual contrast in those who, being highly gifted and highly organized, are placed by nature above their species in all the splendid endowments of intellect; and who are, by the same nature, again drawn down to its level through their social and sympathetic affections.... His fine but fatal organization, which rendered him so susceptible of impressions, whether of good or evil, and which left him at times no shelter against 'horrible imaginings,' or against those real inflictions, calumny and slander, plunged him too frequently into fits of listless melancholy, when, disabused of all illusion, he saw the species to which he belonged in all the nakedness of its inherent infirmity." Yes, this picture is copied from the very soul; and it is no less true, that a man born with such a disposition can never feel at ease or happy in the world which surrounds him, unless he be placed very much above it, or live in it entirely unnoticed. So far I was led by the thoughts of others. Now I must conclude for to-day with a few of my own, the subject of which lies far nearer to our inmost hearts; and discuss a question, the full investigation of which must interest every one, be he ever so little a philosopher by profession. What is conscience? Conscience has unquestionably a twofold nature, as it has a twofold source. The one flows from our highest strength, the other from our greatest weakness; the one from the spirit of God dwelling in us, the other from sensual fear. Perfectly to dissever and distinguish these two kinds of conscience, is necessary to that serenity of mind which can arise only out of the utmost possible clearness: for man, when he has once got beyond the original dominant instinct of feeling, attains to the Permanent, even the recognition of truth, only by mental labour and conflict,--the moral 'sweat of his brow.'