enigmas which no penetration of man has hitherto been able to solve.

The principle above mentioned, which affirms that we are never acquainted with any secret virtue by means of which two events are bound to each other, is calculated to impress upon us a becoming humility in this respect.

It teaches us that we ought not to be surprised, when we see one event regularly succeeding another, where we suspected least of what is apprehended by the vulgar as a link of connection between them. If our eyes were open, and our prejudices dismissed, we should perpetually advert to an experience of this sort.

That the accidents of body and mind should regularly descend from father to son, is a thing that daily occurs, yet is little in correspondence with the systems of our philosophers.

How small a share, accurately speaking, has the father in the production of the son? How many particles is it possible should proceed from him, and constitute a part of the body of the child descended from him? Yet how many circumstances they possess in common?

It has sometimes been supposed that the resemblance is produced by the intercourse which takes place between them after their birth. But this is an opinion which the facts by no means authorize us to entertain.

The first thing which may be mentioned as descending from father to son is his complexion; fair, if a European; swarthy or black, if a negro. Next, the son frequently inherits a strong resemblance to his father's distinguishing features. He inherits diseases. He often resembles him in stature. Persons of the same family are frequently found to live to about the same age. Lastly,there is often a striking similarity in their temper and disposition.

It is easy to perceive how these, observations will apply to the question of genius. If so many other things be heritable, why may not talents be so also? They have a connection with many of the particulars above enumerated; and especially there is a very intimate relation between a man's disposition and his portion of understanding. Again; whatever is heritable, a man must bring into the world with him, either actually, or in the seminal germ from which it is afterwards to be unfolded. Putting therefore the notion of inheritance out of the question, it should seem that complexion, features, diseases, stature, age and temper, may be, and frequently are, born with a man. Why may not then his talents, in the same sense, be born with him?

Is this argument decisive against the generability of talents in the human subject, after the period of birth?

It is the madness of philosophy only, that would undertake to account for every thing, and to trace out the process by which every event in` the world is generated. But let us beware of falling into the opposite extreme. It will often happen that events, which at first sight appear least to associate with that regularity and that precise system to which we are accustomed, will be found upon a minuter and more patient inspection really to belong to it. It is the madness of philosophy to circumscribe the universe within the bounds of our narrow system; it is the madness of ignorance to suppose that every thing is new, and of a species totally dissimilar from what we have already observed.

That a man brings a certain character into the world with him, is a point that must readily be conceded. The mistake is to suppose that he brings an immutable character.

Genius is wisdom; the possessing a great store of ideas, together with a facility in calling them up, and a peculiar discernment in their selection or rejection. In what sense can a new-born child be esteemed wise?

He may have a certain predisposition for wisdom. But it can scarcely be doubted that every child, not peculiarly defective in his make, is susceptible of the communication of wisdom, and

consequently, if the above definition be just, of genius.

The character of man is incessantly changing,

One of the principal reasons why we are so apt to impute the intellectual differences of men to some cause operating prior to their birth, is that we are so little acquainted with the history of the early years of men of talents. Slight circumstances at first determined their propensities to this or that pursuit. These circumstances are irrecoverably forgotten, and we reason upon a supposition as if they never existed.

When the early life of a man of talents can be accurately traced, these circumstances generally present themselves to our observation.

The private memoirs of Gibbon the historian have just been published. In them we are able to trace with considerable accuracy the progress of his mind. While he was at college, he became reconciled to the Roman Catholic faith. By this circumstance he incurred his father's displeasure, who banished him to an obscure situation in Switzerland, where he was obliged to live upon a scanty provision, and was far removed from all the customary amusements of men of birth and fortune. If this train of circumstances had not taken place, would he ever have been the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? Yet how

unusual were his attainments in consequence of these events, in learning, in acuteness of research, and intuition of genius!

Circumstances decide the pursuits in which we shall engage. These pursuits again generate the talents that discover themselves in our progress.

We are accustomed to suppose something mysterious and supernatural in the case of men of genius.

But, if we will dismiss the first astonishment of ignorance, and descend to the patience of investigation, we shall probably find that it falls within the ordinary and established course of human events.

If a man produce a work of uncommon talents, it is immediately supposed that he has been through life an extraordinary creature, that the stamp of divinity was upon him, that a circle of glory, invisible to profaner eyes, surrounded his head, and that every accent he breathed contained an indication of his elevated destiny.

It is no such thing.

When a man writes a book of methodical investigation, he does not write because he understands the subject, but he understands the subject because he has written. He was an uninstructed tyro, exposed to a thousand foolish and miserable mistakes when he began his work, compared