One day the jailer came in at his stated hour. He was, by birth, a German peasant, stupid and brutish enough; but, his calling considered, he might have been worse, and, in the lack of better company, Morton had diligently cultivated his acquaintance. On this occasion he was more than commonly dogged and impenetrable; and, on being taken to task for some neglect or malperformance of his functions, he made no manner of reply, by word, look, or gesture. Being again upbraided, he turned for a moment towards the prisoner a face as expressive as a block of pudding stone, and then sullenly continued his work as before. Morton laughed, partly in vexation, and resumed his walk, of just three paces, to and fro, the length of his cell. He followed the jailer with his eye, as the latter closed the door. "'God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.' Measure the distance from Shakspeare down to that fellow, and then from him again down to a baboon, and which measurement would be the longer? It would be a knotty problem to settle the question of kindred; and yet, after all, a soul to be saved, such as it is, and an indefinite power of expansion and refining, give Jacob strong odds against the baboon. He has human possibilities, like the rest of us; his unit goes to make up the sum of man; man, the riddle and marvel of the universe, the centre of interest, the centre of wonder. When I was a boy, I pleased myself with planning that I would study out the springs of human action, and trace human emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's idea,--to fathom the unfathomable, to line and map out the shifting clouds and the ever-moving winds. De Stael speaks the truth--'Man may learn to rule man, but only God can comprehend him.' View him under one aspect only. Seek to analyze that pervading passion, that mighty mystic influence which, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, prevails in human action, and holds the sovereignty of the world. It is a vain attempt; the reason loses and confounds itself. What human faculty can follow the workings of a principle which at once exalts man to the stars, and fetters him to the earth; which can fire him with triumphant energies, or lull him into effeminate repose; kindle strange aspirations and eager longings after knowledge; spur the intellect to range time and space, or cramp it within narrow confines, among mean fancies and base associations? In its mysterious contradictions, its boundless possibilities of good and ill, it is a type of human nature itself. The soldier saint, Loyola, was right when he figured the conflicts of man's spirit by the collision of two armies, ranked under adverse banners; for what is the spirit of man but a field of war, with its marches and retreats, its ambuscades, stratagems, surprises, skirmishings, and weary life-long sieges; its shock of onset, and death-grapple, throat to throat? And whoever would be wise, or safe, must sentinel his thoughts, and rule his mind by