“Pshaw, Munro, that is the case now—­that is the necessity and difficulty of to-day.  But where, and what was the necessity, think you, when, in the midst of good practice at Gwinnett bar, where I ruled without competitor, riding roughshod over bench, bar, and jury, dreaded alike by all, I threw myself into the ranks of these men, and put on their habits?  I speak not now in praise of myself, more than the facts, as you yourself know them, will sufficiently warrant.  I am now above those idle vanities which would make me deceive myself as to my own mental merits; but, that such was my standing there and then, I hold indisputable.”

“It is true.  I sometimes look back and laugh at the manner in which you used to bully the old judge, and the gaping jury, and your own brother lawyers, while the foam would run through your clenched teeth and from your lips in very passion; and then I wondered, when you were doing so well, that you ever gave up there, to undertake a business, the very first job in which put your neck in danger.”

“You may well wonder, Munro.  I could not well explain the mystery to myself, were I to try; and it is this which made the question and doubt which we set out to explain.  To those who knew me well from the first, it is not matter of surprise that I should be for ever in excitements of one kind or another.  From my childhood up, my temper was of a restless and unquiet character—­I was always a peevish, a fretful and discontented person.  I looked with scorn and contempt upon the humdrum ways of those about me, and longed for perpetual change, and wild and stirring incidents.  My passions, always fretful and excitable, were never satisfied except when I was employed in some way which enabled me to feed and keep alive the irritation which was their and my very breath of life.  With such a spirit, how could I be what men style and consider a good man?  What folly to expect it.  Virtue is but a sleepy, in-door, domestic quality—­inconsistent with enterprise or great activity.  There are no drones so perfect in the world as the truly orthodox.  Hence the usual superiority of a dissenting, over an established church.  It is for this reason, too, and from this cause, that a great man is seldom, if ever, a good one.  It is inconsistent with the very nature of things to expect it, unless it be from a co-operation of singular circumstances, whose return is with the comets.  Vice, on the contrary, is endowed with strong passions—­a feverish thirst after forbidden fruits and waters—­a bird-nesting propensity, that carries it away from the haunts of the crowded city, into strange wilds and interminable forests.  It lives upon adventure—­it counts its years by incidents, and has no other mode of computing time or of enjoying life.  This fact—­and it is undeniable with respect to both the parties—­will furnish a sufficient reason why the best heroes of the best poets are always great criminals.  Were this not the case, from what would the interest be