BENEVOLENCE.
There is a beautiful story recorded in an ancient Pagan writer, “That the deity who formed the first man out of the ground, reflecting at the same time on the calamities which the unhappy creature was to undergo, wept over his work, and tempered it with tears.” By this accident man was endued with a softness of disposition, and the most tender feelings: his descendants inherited these benevolent qualities, that by mutually relieving each other’s sufferings, they might in some measure alleviate their own; and that some amends might be made for the natural wants and imperfections of their nature, by the pleasure which they receive from soothing distress, and softening disappointment.
For the New-York Weekly Magazine.