character? Is not great sensibility born with its irritable fibres? Will
not the deep retired character cling to its musings? And the unalterable
being of intrepidity and fortitude, will he not, commanding even amidst
his sports, lead on his equals? The boyhood of Cato was marked by the
sternness of the man, observable in his speech, his countenance, and his
puerile amusements; and BACON, DESCARTES, HOBBES, GRAY, and others,
betrayed the same early appearance of their intellectual vigour and
precocity of character.

The virtuous and contemplative BOYLE imagined that he had discovered in
childhood that disposition of mind which indicated an instinctive
ingenuousness. An incident which he relates, evinced, as he thought, that
even then he preferred to aggravate his fault rather than consent to
suppress any part of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his
mind. His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquiry. "This
trivial passage," the little story alluded to, "I have mentioned now, not
that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, but because as the sun
is seen best at his rising and his setting, so men's native dispositions
are clearliest perceived whilst they are children, and when they are
dying. These little sudden actions are the greatest discoverers of men's
true humours."

ALFIERI, that historian of the literary mind, was conscious that even in
his childhood the peculiarity and the melancholy of his character
prevailed: a boyhood passed in domestic solitude fed the interior feelings
of his impassioned character; and in noticing some incidents of a childish
nature, this man of genius observes, "Whoever will reflect on these inept
circumstances, and explore into the seeds of the passions of man, possibly
may find these neither so laughable nor so puerile as they may appear."
His native genius, or by whatever other term we may describe it, betrayed