Certain it is, that in the universe there can be but one infallible Judge of motives. None but its Maker can see into the secret springs, and clearly comprehend the motions, of the mind. Nevertheless, "the will for the deed" is an old understanding among mankind, in virtue of that inward life whose world and workings they know to extend so far beyond the visible. It is, indeed, the privilege, and in some sense a necessity of human reason, to inquire after, at least, obvious motives, since the smallest acquaintance with character or history cannot be formed without taking them into account. Thus, in the biographies of notable men, in the histories of nations, and in the gossip which constitutes the current history of most neighborhoods, and is relished alike by the denizens of court and hamlet, nobody is satisfied with knowing merely what was done, for the demand invariably follows, Why they did it? That query is often necessary to legal, and always to moral justice. It must be, so to speak, a most mechanical and surface life, whose daily doings the beholder can fully explain, independent of any reference to inward feelings, unuttered memories, or concealed hopes. How many deeds and whole courses of action, chameleon-like, utterly change their complexions, according to the light of attributed motives! Through that medium, the patriot of one party becomes the heartless and designing knave of another; and the fanatical revolutionists of their own generation turn to fearless reformers with the next. Many an act, on the details of which most historians are agreed, is held up by one to the world's praise, and by another to universal censure. Henri Quatre, says the first, conformed to Catholicism rather than continue a civil war in his kingdom; while a second remarks of the same monarch, that he sacrificed his faith for a crown. When Frederick-William of Prussia was just at the hottest of that persecution of his celebrated son, for which, together with his love of tall soldiers, he is best known to the world, the grand dispute amongst his favorite guards at Potsdam was, whether the kicks, cuffs, and imprisonments, which the old king bestowed so liberally on his heir-apparent, were intended to prevent young Fritz turning an infidel, or arose from his father's fears that he might be a greater man than himself! On no subject are mankind more apt to differ, probably because there are few on which observation affords so much inferential and so little direct evidence.