may alter. The intellectual and the moral character are unquestionably
closely allied. ERASMUS acquaints us, that Sir THOMAS MORE had something
ludicrous in his aspect, tending to a smile,--a feature which his
portraits preserve; and that he was more inclined to pleasantry and
jesting, than to the gravity of the chancellor. This circumstance he
imputes to Sir Thomas More "being from a child so delighted with humour,
that he seemed to be even born for it." And we know that he died as he had
lived, with a jest on his lips. The hero, who came at length to regret
that he had but one world to conquer, betrayed the majesty of his restless
genius when but a youth. Had Aristotle been nigh when, solicited to join
in the course, the princely boy replied, that "He would run in no career
where kings were not the competitors," the prescient tutor might have
recognised in his pupil the future and successful rival of Darius and
Porus.

A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by one of his
attendants, forms an authentic collection of juvenile anecdotes, which
made me feel very forcibly that there are some children who deserve to
have a biographer at their side; but anecdotes of children are the rarest
of biographies, and I deemed it a singular piece of good fortune to have
recovered such a remarkable evidence of the precocity of character.[A]
Professor Dugald Stewart has noticed a fact in ARNAULD'S infancy, which,
considered in connexion with his subsequent life, affords a good
illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of
reason. ARNAULD, who, to his eightieth year, passed through a life of
theological controversy, when a child, amusing himself in the library of
the Cardinal Du Perron, requested to have a pen given to him. "For what
purpose?" inquired the cardinal. "To write books, like you, against the
Huguenots." The cardinal, then aged and infirm, could not conceal his joy
at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and placing the pen in his