most tenderly with those who have been visited with a similar bereavement. And the sympathy of such parents is proportioned to the grief which they themselves experienced on the loss of their own children. The bereavement suffered by others could not recal more grief than themselves felt. On the contrary, if they see parents more overwhelmed by the loss of children than they themselves were, they do not sympathise with that excess of sorrow, but rather wonder that any persons should be so agonised and prostrated with a stroke which they could bear with comparative equanimity. Again, the frequent witnessing of the same cause of pain to others, deadens the emotion of sympathy, according to that general law of suggestion, that all causes of pain or pleasure are diminished in their effect by repetition. Surgeons who frequently perform operations, and students who frequently witness them, lose all sympathy with the patient, while they are becoming on every repetition better acquainted with the nature of the operation, and more dexterous in the performance of it. · We have known a surgeon so absorbed in the operation of amputating the leg of a patient who cried out violently, as never to have heard his cries; expressing surprise when the patient, after the operation, apologised for the noise that he had made, and declaring that he had not heard it. On the other hand, we have known a surgeon almost unfitted for performing operations on others in consequence of having had a painful operation performed on himself.

But what seems decisive on this point is, that we sympathise with persons of whom we know nothing but. the history of their sufferings. Now that seems to prove that it is not with the person but with the sufferings that we sympathise. The persons may be named A., B., C., as in a mathematical problem, and just as such problems and demonstrations of them are not confined to the diagram before us, but are intended to extend

to all figures coming under the same description, so our sympathising with persons when known to us only as A., B., C., circumstanced in the manner related of them, and suffering as related of them, proves that it is not with these particular individuals that we sympathise, but with the description of the suffering. Let A. be a young lady, beautiful and accomplished, the daughter of a widowed mother of highly respectable family, betrothed to B., a gentleman of worth, in every way a suitable match for A. They are soon about to be married, when A., in the course of her necessary preparations, goes to a mercer's shop to purchase some article of dress. After making her purchase she is followed by S. the shopman, and charged with stealing a valuable lace veil. Her reticule is examined, and the veil found in it. M., the mercer, having experienced several losses of a similar kind, is determined to make her an example, and hands her over to the police; the fearful necessary preliminaries are gone through; she is committed for trial; yet strong in conscious innocence, and in the undiminished esteem of B., who does not believe the charge. The day of trial arrives. M, the mercer, and S., the shopman, swear directly against her; there is no exculpatory evidence; and C., her counsel, is perplexed and despairing of extricating his client from her most critical and agonising situation, when G., a gentleman in the gallery, hands a note to C., requesting to be examined as a witness. C. hesitates to hazard the calling forward of a person of whom he knew nothing; but, in his extremity, he does call forward G., who, on his examination, declares that he was present in the shop when A. was making her purchase, and that he saw S. put the lace veil into A.'s reticule, which did not strike him at the time as being remarkable, as he thought it was one of the articles she had purchased. After crossexamination, the jury are satisfied of A.'s innocence, and she is discharged. S. is afterwards tried for the

perjury, and transported; and it transpires that the robberies which M., his master, had complained of, were effected by S. himself. But the shock has been too much for the nervous system of A. B. afterwards takes C. to visit her; and C. finds her sitting by her mother, beautiful and interesting, but sunk into a state of hopeless idiocy. Now who is there that does not, on reading such a narrative, deeply sympathise with A., her widowed mother, and her lover, and even with the mercer, who, if he was a man of character, must have been distressed beyond measure at the mental anguish which he was prevailed on by deception to inflict? Yet what do we know of the persons who are the subjects of this sad history, but as A., B., C., M., S., &c.

It is, indeed, the more palpable that it is with the sufferings, and not with the sufferer, that we sympathise, when we remember that we sympathise with persons that we know to be fictitious. We may be greatly moved by the sufferings of persons related in tales (such, for example, as the Arabian Nights) so extravagant as to render it impossible to believe them. Who does not sympathise in the sorrows of poor Sinbad the Sailor, and yet who ever believed them? It is not, therefore, with a person that we sympathise, but with sufferings of which we can form some conception from our own expe rience. If the description of suffering do not recal to us some suffering that we have experienced, it fails of exciting our sympathy. We have no sympathy, for example, with the Spirit of Loda in Ossian, when he was cut in two by the sword of Fingal, except, perhaps, that the shriek which he uttered as I rolled into himself he rose upon the wind," suggests some obscure recollection of anguish of some kind. Neither do we sympathise with the effect of cannon shot on the angels in Paradise Lost, simply because it recals nothing that we have ever experienced, and is, therefore, unintelligible to us. Nothing, therefore, we conceive, can be more evident

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by injuring us, from repeating the injury by the dread of injury to himself, or to deprive him of power to injure us.

Revenge is the desire to inflict some injury on the person who has injured us, which desire is proportioned to our estimate of the injury, and modified by our own disposition, and also by the character and circumstances of the object of our revenge. The pleasure which the injuring the object of revenge creates, consists partly in the sense of safety which it seems to procure; but it is often mingled with other feelings by which all consideration of safety is overpowered, and is often indulged under circumstances that increase the danger of further injury to an unlimited extent. Many persons have exposed themselves to certain death, nay, and to death under the most dreadful agony, for the gratification of their revenge.

Gratitude and love excite a desire in us to give pleasure to the object of them, proportioned to the amount of the pleasure which he has occasioned to us, and modified, as in other emotions, by the degree of our own susceptibility, and by the circumstances of the person who has deserved our gratitude. One cause of this desire to give pleasure to those who have afforded pleasure to us is, that witnessing the expression of pleasure in others, recals pleasant recollections to our own minds, unless that effect be prevented by our hating the person whose expression of pleasure we witness. But in the case of a person who has given pleasure to us, dislike or hatred to him is not likely to exist in us; and, therefore, we can participate in his gladness, by enjoying the pleasant recollections which the witnessing of his gladness suggests to our own minds, these pleasant remembrances being heightened by the consciousness that we ourselves are the causes of his gladness. Whether there be any other sources of the desire to requite those who have ministered to our happiness by ministering to theirs, we are not prepared either to

assert or deny, but no others occur to us at present. Some may think that the disposition to requite injury with injury, and benefit with benefit, is born with us, and is intuitive or instinctive. We may have occasion to refer to this afterwards; at present we would leave the question open for consideration.

The notion of personal identity, or self, which the mind necessarily acquires as soon as it discovers the existence of objects external to itself, and especially when it discovers the existence of other minds similar to itself, gives rise to several other emotions, each varying in intensity, according to the intensity of the pleasure or pain contemplated by them, and by which they are excited, and modified by the aspect in which we regard the person or persons who are the objects of them.

Self-love seems to be nothing more than the pleasure of pleasant sensations, exciting the desire of the continuance or repetition of them, and the pain of painful sensations, exciting the desire of being freed from them, or of avoiding the repetition; and these desires extended to the external objects, whether material or mental, which cause these pleasant or painful sensations respectively.

Selfishness is the same desire of prolonging or obtaining pleasant sensations or emotions, and of escaping or avoiding painful ones, but accompanied with a disposition to gratify these desires at the expense of other persons. In a sound, healthful state of mind, witnessing the pain of others will necessarily give pain to ourselves, because it will recal painful sensations, or objects causing such sensations to our own minds; but if we be so intent on any pleasure which we desire, that we pay little or no regard to the pain which the gratifying of our desire may cause to others, we are selfish. And the amount of our selfishness will be measured by the amount of the pleasure that we desire, as compared with the amount of pleasure of which we deprive others,