endent
MIND can analyze the nature of a murder, coolly as the anatomist
dissects his human subject. Eugene Aram has too much intellect. Perhaps
his heart is not bad,--what there is of it,--but its virtue is negative.
When we silence the conscience, in judging of right and wrong, reason is
sure to lead us astray."

"I understand now, better than ever before, why expanded minds are so
prone to smile upon and shake hands with crime," said Chester.
"Enlarging the intellect, to the neglect of the soul, we leave this to
become shriveled, like a flower growing in the shade of a great tree."

"A truth, my young friend, every student should bear in mind," observed
the clergyman, earnestly.

Chester walked before him, on a thick fragment of bark, and over a
grassy knoll, in silence. He was wondering why it was that the gentle
old man had gained such a power over him, to conquer his pride, and to
call out his deepest feelings.

"I don't know why it is," said he, as they crossed a rude bridge, thrown
over the sluggish brook, "but I feel as though I could talk with you
more freely than with anybody else. Perhaps it is well that the
stage-coach incident occurred. I felt that I _must_ apologize to you
for my ungentlemanly conduct; and I see that what was so unpleasant to
me was only the breaking of the ice. It must be your wide and genial
charity that has had such an effect upon me. Clergymen are generally
such grim moralists, that they make me shudder."

"When I consider the calm benignity, the ineffably sweet wisdom, the
infinite love of Him who said, 'Go, and sin no more,' what am I, that I
should condemn a brother?" said Father Brighthopes, with suffused
features.

Chester was deeply touched.

"I am not a wilful sinner," he muttered, from his heart. "I do love
purity, goodness, holiness. _I hate myself_ for my bad nature!" he
exclaimed, bitterly.

"Ah, that will never do," replied the old man, softly and kindly. "My
son, I feel for you. I feel with you. But the nature God has given you
in his wisdom,--hate not that. It is the soil in which your soul is
planted. You must be content with it for a season. It is a suicidal
thought, to wish your roots plucked up, because they reach down amid
weeds and rottenness. No; cultivate the soil. Carefully, prayerfully
purify it, and subdue its rankness. Then shall your spirit, grafted with
the scion of holiness, flourish like a goodly tree. It shall gather
wholesome sustenance from b