busied in the cares of providing for a numerous offspring, to be capable
of indulging minute attentions to any particular infant; and some are
altogether unconscious, or regardless, of the presence of genius, amidst
the clearest manifestations of it's existence. To most other persons,
but the parents, if we except a good old grandmother, or an artful or
affectionate nurse, the actions and the sayings of a child seldom afford
much interest; and the relation of them often gives rise to no
inconsiderable degree of animosity. The parents of other children, and
even the other children of the same parents, not unfrequently hear such
praises with distaste and aversion; and, if they do not soon entirely
forget them, it is, perhaps, only because their unextinguishable envy
condemns them to preserve the remembrance of the circumstance by which
it was originally excited.

These, among various other causes, prevent our always becoming
acquainted with the early occurrences which distinguish genius, even
where they soonest appear: but, genius is not always apparent in early
infancy; and, where it is, every hero does not, like Hercules, find a
serpent successfully to encounter in his cradle.

Of Lord Nelson's infancy, from whatever causes, scarcely any anecdote is
now preserved. That which may, probably, be considered as the first, has
often been related; but never, heretofore, in a manner sufficiently
accurate and circumstantial.

At the very early age of not more than five or six years, little
Horatio, being on a visit to his grandmother, at Hilborough, who was
remarkably fond of all her son's children, and herself a most exemplary
character, had strolled out, with a boy some years older than himself,
to ramble over the country in search of birds-nests. Dinner-time,