text:  And if in hands more impure it has sometimes been applied to less elevated purposes; if the turbid waters of human corruption have mingled with the stream and the annals of the past have been searched not to display its magnanimity but to portray its seductions; we must console ourselves by the reflection that such is the inevitable lot of humanity that genius cannot open a noble career which depravity will not enter nor invent an engine for the exaltation of the human mind which vice will not pervert to its degradation