call a thriving child. His weaning, I am told, was attended by some
little ailments, occasioned by his pining after the food to which he
had been accustomed; but proper means being found to make him lose the
memory of the breast, he soon recovered his flesh, increased in
strength, and could go about the room at a year and some few months
old, without the help of a leading-string.

Hitherto the passions, those powerful abettors, I had almost said sole
authors of all human actions, operated but faintly, and could shew
themselves only in proportion to the vigour of the animal frame. Yet
latent as they are, an observing eye may easily discover them in each
of their different propensities, even from the most early infancy. The
eyes of Natura on any new and pleasing object, would denote by their
sparkling a sensation of joy:--_Fear_ was visible in him by clinging to
his nurse, and endeavouring to bury himself as it were in her bosom, at
the sound of menaces he was not capable of understanding:--That
_sorrow_ has a place among the first emotions of the soul, was
demonstrable by the sighs which frequently would heave his little
heart, long before it was possible for him either to know or to imagine
any motives for them:--That the seeds of _avarice_ are born with us, by
the eagerness with which he catched at money when presented to him,
his clinching it fast in his hand, and the reluctance he expressed on
being deprived of it:--That _anger_, and impatience of controul, are
inherent to our nature, might be seen in his throwing down with
vehemence any favourite toy, rather than yield to resign it; and that
spite and revenge are also but too much so, by his putting in practice
all such tricks as his young invention could furnish, to vex any of the
family who had happened to cross him:--Even those tender inclinations,
which afterwards bear the name of _amorous_, begin to peep out long
before the difference of sex is thought on; as Natura proved by the