nt. Civilization has evils unknown to the savage
state; and _vice versa_. Men in all states seem to have much the same
proportion of happiness. We judge others with eyes accustomed to dwell
on our own circumstances. I have seen the slave, whom we commiserate,
enjoy his holiday with a rapture unknown to the grave freeman. I have
seen that slave made free, and enriched by the benevolence of his
master; and he has been gay no more. The masses of men in all countries
are much the same. If there are greater comforts in the hardy North,
Providence bestows a fertile earth and a glorious heaven, and a
mind susceptible to enjoyment as flowers to light, on the voluptuous
indulgence of the Italian, or the contented apathy of the Hindoo. In
the mighty organization of good and evil, what can we vain individuals
effect? They who labour most, how doubtful is their reputation! Who
shall say whether Voltaire or Napoleon, Cromwell or Caesar, Walpole or
Pitt, has done most good or most evil? It is a question casuists may
dispute on. Some of us think that poets have been the delight and the
lights of men; another school of philosophy has treated them as the
corrupters of the species,--panderers to the false glory of war, to
the effeminacies of taste, to the pampering of the passions above the
reason. Nay, even those who have effected inventions that change the
face of the earth--the printing-press, gunpowder, the steam-engine,--men
hailed as benefactors by the unthinking herd, or the would-be
sages,--have introduced ills unknown before, adulterating and often
counterbalancing the good. Each new improvement in machinery deprives
hundreds of food. Civilization is the eternal sacrifice of one
generation to the next. An awful sense of the impotence of human
agencies has crushed down the sublime aspirations for mankind which I
once indulged. For myself, I float on the great waters, without pilot or
rudder, and trust passively to the winds, that are the breath of God."

This conversation left a deep impression upon Evelyn; it inspired her
with a new interest in one in whom so many noble qualities lay dulled
and torpid, by the indulgence of a self-sophistry, which, girl as she
was, she felt wholly unworthy of his powers. And it was this error in
Maltravers that, levelling his superiority, brought him nearer to her
heart. Ah, if she could restore him to his race! It was a dangerous
desire, but it intoxicated and absorbed her.

Oh, how sweetly wer