at this minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to
give way to feeling.'[1]

Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking was probably
suggested, has insisted on the same thing, and made rather a perverse
use of it in several parts of his _Reflections on the French
Revolution_; and Windham in one of his _Speeches_ has clenched it into
an aphorism--'There is nothing so true as habit.' Once more I would
say, common sense is tacit reason. Conscience is the same tacit sense
of right and wrong, or the impression of our moral experience and moral
apprehensions on the mind, which, because it works unseen, yet
certainly, we suppose to be an instinct, implanted in the mind; as we
sometimes attribute the violent operations of our passions, of which we
can neither trace the source nor assign the reason, to the instigation
of the Devil!

I shall here try to go more at large into this subject, and to give such
instances and illustrations of it as occur to me.

One of the persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to Government
and been included in a charge for high treason in the year 1794, had
retired soon after into Wales to write an epic poem and enjoy the
luxuries of a rural life. In his peregrinations through that beautiful
scenery, he had arrived one fine morning at the inn at Llangollen, in
the romantic valley of that name. He had ordered his breakfast, and was
sitting at the window in all the dalliance of expectation when a face
passed, of which he took no notice at the instant--but when his
breakfast was brought in presently after, he found his appetite for it
gone--the day had lost its freshness in his eye--he was uneasy and
spiritless; and without any cause that he could discover, a total change