eat inwardly; and, when foiled in the discharge of their purposed violence upon others, they recoiland, without one soothing ingredient to calm the labouring effervescence, they kindle a hell in the heart of the unhappy owner. Internally there is a celestial peace and satisfaction in virtue, even though in the midst of its outward discomfiture, it be compelled to weep over the unredressed wrongs and sufferings of humanity. On the other hand, the very glance of disappointed malevolence, bespeaks of this evil affection, that, of itself, it is a fierce and fretting distemper of the soul, an executioner of vengeance for all the guilty passions it may have fanned into mischievous activity, and for all the crimes it may have instigated.

11. And this contrast between a good and an evil affection, this superiority of the former to the latter is fully sustained, when, instead of looking to the state of mind which is left by the disappointment of each, we look to the state of mind which is left by their respective gratifications the one a state of sated compassion, the other of sated resentment. There is one most observable distinction between the states of feeling, by which an act of compassion on the one hand, and of resentment on the other, are succeeded. It is seldom that man feasts his eyes on that spectacle of prostrate suffering which, in a moment of fury, he hath laid at his feet; in the same way that he feasts his eyes on that picture of family comfort which smiles upon him from some cottage home, that his generosity had reared. This looks as if the sweets of benevolence were lasting, whereas the sweets of revengeful malice,

such as they are, are in general but momentary. An act of compassion may extinguish for a time the feeling of compassion, by doing away that suffering which is the object of it; but then it generally is followed up by a feeling of permanent regard. An act of revenge, when executed to the full extent of the desire or purpose, does extinguish and put an end to the passion of revenge; and is seldom, if ever, followed up by a feeling of permanent hatred. An act of kindness but attaches the more, and augments a friendly disposition towards its object. It were both untrue in itself, and unfair to our nature to say, that an act of revenge but exasperates the more, and always augments, or even often augments, a hostile disposition towards its object. It has been said that we hate the man whom we have injured: but whatever the truth of this observation may be, certain it is, that we do not so hate the man of whom we have taken full satisfaction for having injured us; or, if we could imagine aught so monstrous, and happily só rare, as the prolonged, the yet unquelled satisfaction of one, who could be regaled for hours with the sighs of him whom his own hands had wounded; or, for months and years, with the pining destitution of the household whom himself had impoverished and brought low this were because the measure of the revenge had not equalled the measure of the felt provocation, only perhaps to be appeased and satiated by death. This, at length, would terminate the emotion. And here a new insight opens upon us into the distinction between a good and a bad affection. Benevolence, itself of immortal quality,

would immortalize its objects: malignity, if not appeased, by an infliction short of death, would destroy them.* The one is ever strengthening itself upon old objects, and fastening upon new ones; the other is ever extinguishing its resentment towards old objects by the pettier acts of chastisement, or, if nothing short of a capital punishment will appease it, by dying with their death. The exterminating blow, the death which "clears all scores"—this forms the natural and necessary limit even to the fiercest revenge; whereas, the outgoings of benevolence are quite indefinite. In revenge, the affection is successively extinguished; and, if relumed, it is upon new objects. In benevolence, the affection is kept up for old objects, while ever open to excitement from new ones; and hence a living and a multiplying power of enjoyment, which is peculiarly its own. On the same principle that we water a shrub just because we had planted it, does our friendship grow and ripen the more towards him on whom we had formerly exercised it. The affection of kindness for each individual object survives the act of kindness, or, rather, is strengthened by the act. Whatever sweetness may have been originally in it, is enhanced by the exercise; and, so far from being stiffed by the first gratification, it remains in greater freshness than ever for higher and larger gratifications than before. It is the perennial quality of their gratification, which stamps that superiority on the good affections, we are now contending for. Benevolence

So true it is, that he who hateth his brother with implacable hatred is a murderer.

both perpetuates itself upon its old objects, and expands itself into a wider circle as it meets with new ones. Not so with revenge, which generally disposes of the old object by one gratification; and then must transfer itself to a new object, ere it can meet with another gratification. Let us grant that each affection has its peculiar walk of enjoyment. The history of the one walk presents us with a series of accumulations; the history of the other with a series of extinctions.

12. But in dwelling on this beautiful peculiarity, by which a good affection is distinguished from a bad one, we are in danger of weakening our immediate argument. We bring forward the matter a great deal too favourably for the malignant desires of the human heart, if, while reasoning on the supposition of an enjoyment, however transitory in their gratification, we give any room for the imagination that even this is unmixed enjoyment. We have already stated, that, of themselves, and anterior to their gratification, there is a painfulness in these desires; and that when by their gratification we get quit of this painfulness, we might after all obtain little more than a relief from misery. But the truth is, that, generally speaking, we obtain a great deal less on the side of happiness than this; for, in most cases, all that we obtain by the gratification of a malignant passion, is but the exchange of one misery for another; and this apart still from the remorse of an evil perpetration. There is one familiar instance of it, which often occurs in conversation when, piqued by something offensive in the remark or manner of our fellows, we react with

a severity which humbles and overwhelms him. In this case, the pain of the resentment is succeeded by the pain we feel in the spectacle of that distress which ourselves have created; and this, too, aggravated perhaps by the reprobation of all the by-standers, affording thereby a miniature example of the painful alternations which are constantly taking place in the history of moral evil; when the misery of wrong affections is but replaced, to the perpetrator himself, by the misery of the wrong actions to which they have hurried him. It is thus that a life of frequent gratification may, notwithstanding, be a life of intense wretchedness. It may help our imagination of such a state, to conceive of one, subject every hour to the agonies of hunger, with such a mal-conformation at the same time in his organ of taste, that, in food of every description, he felt a bitter and universal nausea. There were here a constant gratification, yet a constant and severe endurance a mere alternation of cruel sufferings the displacement of one set of agonies, by the substitution of other agonies in their room. This is seldom, perhaps never realized in the physical world; but in the moral world it is a great and general phenomenon. The example shows at least the possibility of a constitution, under which a series of incessant gratifications may be nothing better than a restless succession of distress and disquietude; and that such should be the constitution of our moral nature as to make a life of vice a life of vanity and cruel vexation, is strong experimental evidence of Him who ordained this