place, and opportunity. Of course, it is to be understood that the
actor is one, in the first place, wanting in the moral sense. What
we simply mean to affirm is, that the particular, single act, is,
in few instances, deliberately meditated from the beginning. We
very much incline to think that some one event, which we ordinarily
refer to the chapter of accidents, has first set the mind to work
upon schemes, which would otherwise, perhaps, never be thought of
at all. Thus, we find persons who continue very good people, as
the world goes, until middle age, or even seniority; then, suddenly
breaking out into some enormous offence against decency and society,
which startles the whole pious neighborhood. Folks start up, with
outstretched hands and staring eyes, and cry aloud:--

"Lord bless us, who would have thought so good a man could be so
bad!"

He, poor devil, never fancied it himself, till he became so,
and it was quite too late to alter his arrangements. Perhaps his
neighbors may have had some share in making him so. Pious persons
are very frequently reduced to these straits by having the temptation
forced too much upon them. Flesh and blood can not always withstand
the provocation of earthly delicacies, even where the spirit is a
tolerably stout one; and of the inadequacy of the mind, always to
contend with the inclinations of the flesh, have we not a caution in
that injunction of Holy Book which warns us to fly from temptation?
But lame people can not fly, and he is most certainly lame who halts
upon mere feet of circumstances. Such people are always in danger.

Now, Alfred Stevens, properly brought up, from the beginning, at some
theological seminary, would have been--though in moral respects