Page:Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse.pdf/85

 , the height of its mountains, and the treasures that are concealed in its secret caverns; we may follow science as she soars to the heavens, find the places of the planets, call them by their names, compute their distances; magnitude, and periods of revolution; yet if we span the whole circle of the universe, we may return and find mysteries in the little empire within, to perplex our researches, and baffle our keenest penetration. We have heard much of the "monitor within;" but whoever attempts to trace her actions to their first spring, and her designs to their real source, will be convinced that she has also an advocate within. When this advocate perceives the eye of the mind turned inward, she endeavours to elude its pursuit, but if she finds it bent on resolute search, she casts obstacles before it, spreads a veil over what it seeks to investigate, softens errors into virtues, speaks of crimes as inadvertencies, and endeavours to blind the eye of reason the judge, and to silence the voice of conscience the accuser. This is the natural pride and vanity of the human heart; it assumes as many shapes as fancy can devise; it flies from reproof, and when truth is painful "loves darkness better than light." Her object is to keep the soul ignorant of itself, to deceive it into compliance, to flatter it into submission, till her own empire is firmly established, and that bound in perpetual slavery. But both our duty and happiness