til the tinder collected within him
takes fire? The dreamer, who loves the wonderful is charmed by the
singularity and wonder of such a phenomenon; but the friend of truth
seeks a mother for these lost children. He seeks her in the
unalterable structure of the human soul, and in the variable conditions
by which it is influenced from without, and by searching both these he
is sure to find her. He is now no more astonished to see the poisonous
hemlock thriving in that bed, in every other part of which wholesome
herbs are growing, to find wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, together
in the same cradle.

Not to mention any of the advantages which psychology derives from such
a method of treating history, this method has alone the preference,
because it uproots the cruel scorn and proud security with which erect
and untempted virtue commonly looks down upon the fallen, because it
diffuses the mild spirit of toleration, without which no fugitive can
return, no reconciliation between the law and its offender is possible,
no infected member of society can escape utter mortification.

Had the criminal of whom I am now about to speak a right to appeal to
that spirit of toleration? Was he really lost for the body of the
state, without a possibility of redemption? I will not anticipate the
reader's verdict. Our leniency will no more avail him, since he
perished by the hand of the executioner, but the dissection of his
crime will perhaps instruct humanity, and possibly instruct justice
also.

Christian Wolf was the son of an innkeeper in a provincial town (the
name of which must be concealed for reasons which will be obvious in
the sequel), and, his father being dead, he assisted his mother in the
business till his twentieth year. The business was bad, and Wolf had
many an idle hour. Even from his school days he was notorious as a
loose kind of fellow. Grown up girls complained of his audacity, and
the lads of the town reverenced his inventive powers. Nature had
neglected his person. A little insignificant figure, curly hair of an
unpleasant blackness, a flat nose, and a swollen upper lip, which had
been moreover put out of its place by the kick of a horse, gave a
repulsiveness to his appearance, which scared all the women away from
him, and afforded abundant material for the wit of his comrades.

Obstinately did he endeavour to gain what had been denied him; because
he was unpleasant he determined to please. He was s