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.
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_For the +New-York Weekly Magazine+._
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