R ESSAY I. ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF . LETTER I. Affectionate Interest with which we revert to our past Life"It deserves a brief Record for our our use-Very few things to be noted of the Multitude that have occurred Direction and Use of such a Review as would be required for writing a Memoir-Importance of our past Life considered as the Beginning of an endless Duration of Existence-General Deficiency of Self-Observation-Oblivion of the greatest number of our past Feelings-Occasional Glimpses of vivid Recollection-Assoriations with Things and Places-The different and unknown Associations of different Persons with the same Places. MY DEAR FRIEND, EVERY one knows with what interest it is natural to retrace the course of our own lives. The past states and periods of a man's being are retained in a connexion with the present by that principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relinquish its hold on what has once been his. Though he cannot but be sensible of how little consequence his life can have been in the creation, compared with many other trains of events, yet he has felt it more important to himself than all other trains together; and you will very rarely find him tired of narrating again the little history, or at least the favorite parts of the little history, of himself. Necessarily a very large portion of what has occupied the successive years of life was of a kind to be utterly useless for a history of it; because it was merely for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps in the space of forty years, millions of sentences are proper to be uttered, and many thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, or of journeys to be performed, which it would be ridiculous to record. They are a kind of material for the common expenditure and waste of the day. And yet it is often by a detail of this subordinate economy of life, that the works of fiction, the narratives of age, the journals of travellers, and even grave biographical accounts, are made so unreasonably long. As well might a chronicle of the coats that a man has worn, with the colour and date of each, be called his life, for any important uses of relating its history. As well might a man, of whom I inquire the dimensions, the internal divisions, and the use, of some remarkable building, begin to tell me how much wood was employed in the scaffolding, where the mortar was prepared, or how often it rained while the work was proceeding. But, in a deliberate review of all that we can remember of past life, it will be possible to select a certain proportion which may with the most propriety be What I am recomdeemed the history of the man. mending is, to follow the order of time, and reduce your recollections, from the earliest period to the present, into as simple a statement and explanation as you can, of your feelings, opinions, and habits, and of the principal circumstances through each stage that have influenced them, till they have become at last what they now are. Whatever tendencies nature may justly be deemed to have imparted in the first instance, you would probably find the greater part of the moral constitution of your being composed of the contributions of many years and events, consolidated by degrees into what we call character; and by investigating the progress of the accumulation, you would be assisted to judge more clearly how far the materials are valuable, the mixture congruous, and the whole conformation worthy to reWith respect to any friend that main unaltered. greatly interests us, we have always a curiosity to obtain an accurate account of the past train of his life and feelings; and though there may be several reasons for such a wish, it partly springs from a consciousness how much this retrospective knowledge would assist to decide or confirm our estimate of that friend; but our estimate of ourselves is of more serious consequence. To turn this partiality to some account, I recollect having proposed to two or three of my friends that they should write, each principally however for his own use, memoirs of their own lives, endeavouring not so much to enumerate the mere facts and events of life, as to discriminate the successive states of the mind, and the progress of character. It is in this progress that we acknowledge the chief importance of life to consist: but even as supplying a constant series of interests to the passions, and separately from every T consideration of moral and intellectual discipline, we have all accounted our life an inestimable possession, which it deserved incessant cares and labours to retain, and which continues in most cases to be still held with anxious attachment. What has been the object of so much partiality, and has been delighted and painted by so many emotions, might claim, even if the highest interest were out of the question, that a short memorial should be retained by him who has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment depart, and can never recal it. To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a ponderous task. To reap the products of so many acres of earth indeed The elapsed periods of life acquire importance too might, to one person, be an undertaking of mighty toil. from the prospect of its continuance. The smallest But the materials of any value that all past life can supply to a recording pen, would be reduced by a dis- thing becomes respectable, when regarded as the commencement of what has advanced, or is advancing, cerning selection to a very small and modest amount. into magnificence. The first rude settlement of RomWould as much as one page of moderate size be ulus would have been an insignificant circumstance, deemed by any man's self-importance to be due, on an No and might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had average, to each of the days that he has lived? not at length commanded the world. The little rill, man would judge more than one in ten thousand of all near the source of one of the great American rivers, is his thoughts, sayings, and actions, worthy to be menan interesting object to the traveller, who is apprised, tioned, if memory were capable of recalling then. No. 17. as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that this is the stream which runs so far, and which gradually swells into so immense a flood. So, while I anticipate the endless progress of life, and won-, der through what unknown scenes it is to take its course, its past years lose that character of vanity which would seem to belong to a train of fleeting perishing moments, and I see them assuming the dignity of a commencing eternity. In them I have begun to be that conscious existence which I am to be through infinite duration and I feel a strange emotion of curiosity about this little life, in which I am setting out on such a progress; I cannot be content without an accurate sketch of the windings thus far of a stream which is to bear me on forever. I try to imagine how it will be to recollect, at a far distant point of my era, what I was when here; and wish, if it were possible, to retain, as I advance, the whole course of my existence within the scope of clear reflection; to fix in my mind so strong an idea of what I have been in this original period of my time, that I shall possess this idea in ages too remote for calculation. The review becomes still more important, when I learn the influence which this first part of the progress will have on the happiness or misery of the next. One of the greatest difficulties in the way of executing the proposed task will have been caused by the extreme deficiency of that self-observation, which, to any extent, is no common employment either of youth or any later age. Men realize their existence in the surrounding objects that act upon them, and from the interests of self. rather than in that very self, that interior being that is thus acted upon. So that this being itself, with its thoughts and feelings, as distinct from the objects of those thoughts and feelings, but rarely occupies its own deep and patient attention. Men carry their minds as they carry their watches, content to be ignorant of the mechanism of their movements, and satisfied with attending to the little exterior circle of things, to which the passions, like indexes, are pointing. It is surprising to see how little self-knowledge a person not watchfully observant of himself may have gained, in the whole course of an active, or even an inquisitive life. He may have lived almost an age, and traversed a continent, minutely examining its curiosities, and interpreting the half-obliterated characters on its monuments, unconscious the while of a process operating on his own mind, to impress or to erase characteristics of much more importance to him than all the figured brass or marble that Europe contains. After having explored many a cavern or dark ruinous avenue, he may have left undetected a darker recess in his character. He may have conversed with many people, in different languages, on numberless subjects; but, having neglected those conversations with himself by which his whole moral being should have been kept continually disclosed to his view, he is better qualified perhaps to describe the intrigues of a foreign court, or the progress of a foreign trade; to represent the manners of the Italians, or the Turks; to narrate the proceedings of the Jesuits, or the adventures of the Gypsies; than to write the history of his own mind. If we had practised habitual self-observation, we could not have failed to make important discoveries. There have been thousands of feelings, each of which, if strongly seized upon, and made the subject of reflection, would have shown us what our character was, and what it was likely to become. There have been numerous incidents, which operated on us as tests, and so fully brought out our prevalent quality, that another person, who should have been discriminately observing us, would instantly have formed a decided estimate. But unfortunately the mind is generally too much occupied by the feeling or the incident tself, to have the slightest care or consciousness that any thing could be learnt, or is disclosed. In very early youth it is almost inevitable for it to be thus lost to itself even amidst its own feelings, and the external objects of attention; but it seems a contemptible thing, and certainly is a criminal and dangerous thing, for a man in mature life to allow himself this thoughtless escape from self-examination. We have not only neglected to observe what our feelings indicated, but have also in a very great degree ceased to remember what they were. We may justly wonder how our minds could pass away successively fron so many scenes and moments which seemed to us important, each in its time, and retain so light an impression, that we have now nothing to tell about what once excited our utmost emotion. As to my own mind, I perceive that it is becoming uncertain of the exact nature of many feelings of considerable interest, even of comparatively recent date; of course, the remem brance of what was felt in early life is cxceerlingly faint. I have just been observing several children of eight or ten years old, in all the active vivacity which enjoys the plentitude of the moment without looking before or after;' and while observing, I attempted, but without success, to recollect what I was at that age. I can indeed remember the principal events of the period, and the actions and projects to which my feelings impelled me; but the feelings themselves, in their own pure juvenility, cannot be revived, so as to be described and placed in comparison with those of maturity. What is become of all those vernal fancies which had so much power to touch the heart? What a number of sentiments have lived and revelled in the soul that are now irrevocably gone! They died, like the singing birds of that time, which now sing no more. The life that we then had, now seems almost as if it could not have been our own. When we go back to it in thought, and endeavour to recal the interests which animate it, they will not come. We are like a man returning, after the absence of many years, to visit the embowered cottage where he passed the morning of his life, and finding only a relic of its ruins. But many of the propensities which still continue, probably originated then and our not being able to explore them up to those remote sources renders a complete investigation of our moral and intellectual characters forever impossible. How little, in those years, we were aware, when we met with the incident, or heard the conversation, or saw the spectacle or felt the emotion, which were the first causes of some of the chief permanent tendencies of future life, how much and how vainly we might, long afterward, wish to ascertain the origin of those tendencies. But if we cannot absolutely reach their origin, it will however be interesting to trace them back through all the circumstances which have increased their strength. In some occasional states of the mind, we can look back much more clearly, and to a much greater distance, than at other times. I would advise to seize those short intervals of illumination which sometimes occur without our knowing the cause, and in which the genuine aspect of some remote event, or long-forgotten image, is recovered with extreme distinctness by vivid spontaneous glimpses of thought such as no effort could have commanded; as the sombre features and minute objects of a distant ridge of hills become strikingly visible in the strong gleams of light which transiently fall on them. An instance of this kind occurred to me but a few hours since, while reading what had no perceptible connexion with a circumstance of my early youth, which probably I have not recollected for many years, and which had no unusual interest at the time that it happened. That circumstance came suddenly to my mind with a clearness of representation which I was not able to retain for the length of an hour, and which I could not by the strongest effort at this instant renew. I seemed almost to see the walls and windows of a particular room, with four or five persons in it, ho were so perfectly restored to my imagination, that could recognise not only the features, but even the omentary expressions of their countenances, and then ones of their voices. will be worth while to inquire how far, and in what manner. Few persons can look back to the early period when they were most directly the subjects of instruction, without a regret for themselves, (which may be extend According to different states of the mind too, retropect appears longer or shorter. It may happen thated to the human race,) that the result of instruction, ome meinorable circumstance of very early life shall e so powerfully recalled, as to contract the wide inervening space, by banishing from the view, a little vhile, all the series of intermediate remembrances; ut when this one object of memory retires again to ts remoteness and indifference, and all the others reume their proper places and distances, the retrospect ppears long. excepting that which leads to evil, bears so small a proportion to its compass and repetition. Yet some good consequences will follow the diligent inculcation of truth and precept on the youthful mind; and our consciousness of possessing certain advantages derived from it will be a partial consolation in the review that will comprise so many proofs of its comparative inefficacy. You can recollect perhaps, the instructions to which you feel yourself permanently the most indebted, and some of those which produced the greatest effect at the time, those which surprised, delighted, or mortified you. You can remember the facility or difficulty of understanding, the facility or difficulty of believing, and the practical inferences which you drew from prin Places and things which have an association with any of the events or feelings of past life, will greatly assist the recollection of them. A man of strong associations finds memoirs of himself already written on the places where he has conversed with happiness or mise[V. If an old man wished to animate for a moment the languid and faded ideas which he retains of his youth,ciples, on the strength of your own reason, and somehe might walk with his crutch across the green, where The once played with companions who are now probably laid to repose in another spot not far off. An aged saint may meet again some of the affecting ideas of his early piety, in the place where he first thought it happy to pray. A walk in a meadow, the sight of a bank of flowers, perhaps even of some one flower, a landscape with the tints of autumn, the descent into a valley, the brow of a mountain, the house where a friend has been met, or has resided, or has died, have often produced a much more lively recollection of our past feelings, and of the objects and events which caused them, than the most perfect description could have done; and we have lingered a considerable time for the pensive luxury of thus resuming the departed state. times in variance with those made by your instructers. You can remember what views of truth and duty were most frequently and cogently presented, what passions were appealed to, what arguments were employed, and which had the greatest influence. Perhaps your present idea of the most convincing and persuasive mode of instruction, may be derived from your early experience of the manner of those persons with whose opinions you felt it the most easy and delightful to harmonize, who gave you the most agreeable consciousness of your faculties expanding to the light, like morning flowers, and who, assuming the least of dictation, exerted the greatest degree of power. You can recollect the submissiveness with which your mind yielded to instructions as from an oracle, or the hardihood with But there are many to whom local associations pre- which you dared to examine and oppose them. You senc images which they fervently wish they could for- can remember how far they became, as to your own get; images which haunt the places where crimes had conduct, an internal authority of reason and conscience, been perpetrated, and which seemed to approach and when you were not under the inspection of those who eglare on the criminal as he hastily passes by, especially inculcated them; and what classes of persons or things if in the evening or in the night. No local associa- around you they induced you to dislike or approve. tions are so impressive as those of guilt. It may here And you can perhaps imperfectly trace the manner and be observed, that as each one has his own separate re- the particulars in which they sometimes aided, or somemembrances, giving to some places an aspect and a sig-times counteracted, those other influences which have nificance which he alone can perceive, there must be a far stronger efficacy on the character than instruction an unknown number of pleasing, or mournful, or dreadcan boast. ful associations, spread over the scenes inhabited or visited by men. We pass without any awakened consciousness by the bridge, or the wood, or the house, where there is something to excite the most painful or frightful ideas in the next man that shall come that way, or possibly the companion that walks along with us. How much there is in a thousand spots of the earth, that is invisible and silent to all but the conscious individual! I hear a voice you cannot hear; I see a hand you cannot see. LETTER II. All past Life an Education-Discipline and influence from— direct Instruction-Companionship-Books-Scenes of Nature-and the State of Society. We may regard our past life as a continued though Irregular course of education; and the discipline has consisted of instruction, companionship, reading, and the diversified influence of the world. The young mind eagerly came forward to meet the operation of some or all of these modes of discipline, though without the possibility of a thought concerning the important process under which it was beginning to pass. In some certain degree we have been influenced by each of these parts of the great system of education; it Most persons, I presume, can recollect some few sentiments or conversations which made so deep an impression, perhaps in some instances they can scarcely tell why, that they have been thousands of times recalled, while all the rest have been forgotten; or they can advert to some striking incident, coming in aid of instruction, or being of itself a forcible instruction, which they seem even now to see as clearly as when it happened, and of which they will retain a perfect idea to the end of life. The most remarkable circumstances of this kind deserve to be recorded in the supposed memoirs. In some instances, to recollect the instructions of a former period, will be to recollect too the excellence, the affection, and the death, of the persons who gave them. Amidst the sadness of such a remembrance, it will be a consolation that they are not entirely lost to Wise monitions, when they return on us with this melancholy charm, have more pathetic cogency than when they were first uttered by the voice of a living friend. It will be an interesting occupation of the pensive hour, to recount the advantages which we have received from the beings who have left the world, and to reinforce our virtues from the dust of those who first taught them. us. In our review, we shall find that the companions of our childhood, and of each succeeding period, have had a great influence on our characters. A creature so conformable as man, and at the same time so capable of being moulded into partial dissimilarity by social an | made the earliest and the strongest impression. It is pleasing at a more advanced period to look again into the early favourites; though the mature person may wonder how some of them had once power to absorb his passions, make him retire into a lonely wood in order to read unmolested, repel the approaches of sleep, or infect it, when it came, with visions. A capital part of the proposed task would be to recollect the books that have been read with the greatest interest, the periods when they were read, the succession of them, the partiality which any of them inspired to a particular mode of life, to a study, to a system, of opinions or to a class of human characters; to note the counteraction of later ones (where we have been sensible of it) to the effect produced by the former; and then to endeavour to estimate the whole and ultimate influence. tipathies, cannot have conversed with his fellow beings thousands of hours, walked with them thousands of miles, undertaken with them numberless enterprises, smaller and greater, and had every passion, by turns, awakened in their company, without being immensely affected by all this association. A large share, indeed, of the social interest may have been of so common a kind, and with persons of so common an order, that the effect on the character has been too little peculiar to be strikingly perceptible during the progress. We were not sensible of it, till we came to some of those circumstances and changes in life, which make us aware of the state of our minds by the manner in which new objects are acceptable or repulsive to them. On removing into a new circle of society, for instance, we could perceive, by the number of things in which we found ourselves uncongenial with the new acquaintance, the mo- Considering the multitude of facts, sentiments, and dification which our sentiments had received in the pre- characters, which have been contemplated by a person ceding social intercourse. But in some instances we who has read much, the effect, one should think, must have been sensible, in a very short time, of a powerful have been very great. Still, however, it is probable force operating on our opinions, tastes and habits, and that a very small number of books will have the prethrowing them into a new order. This effect is inevi-eminence in our mental history. Perhaps your memory table, if a young susceptible mind happens to become familiarly acquainted with a person in whom a strongly individual cast of character is sustained and dignified by uncommon mental resources; and it may he found that, generally, the greatest measure of effect has been produced by the influence of a very small number of persons; often of one only, whose extended and interesting mind had more power to surround and assimilate a young, ingenuous being, then the collective influence of a multitude of the persons, whose characters were moulded in the manufactory of custom, and sent forth like images of clay of kindred shape and varnish from a pottery. I am supposing, all along, that the person who writes memoirs of himself, is conscious of something more peculiar than a mere dull resemblance of that ordinary form of character for which it would seem hardly worth while to have been a man. As to the crowd of those who are faithfully stamped, like bank notes, with the same marks, with the difference only of being worth more guineas or fewer, they are mere particles of a glass, mere pieces and bits of the great vulgar or the small; they need not write their history, it may be found in the newspaper chronicle, or the gossip's or the sexton's narrative. It is obvious, in what I have suggested respecting the research through past life, that all the persons who are recalled to the mind, as having had an influence on us, must stand before it in judgment. It is impossible to examine our moral and intellectual growth without forming an estimate, as we proceed, of those who retarded, advanced, or perverted it. Our dearest relatives and friends cannot be exempted. There will be to some instances the necessity of blaming where we wish to give entire praise; though perhaps some worthy motives and generous feelings may, at the same time, be discovered in the conduct where they had hardly been perceived or allowed before. But, at any rate, it is important that in no instance the judgment be duped into delusive estimates, amidst the examination, and so as to deprave the principles of the examination, by which we mean to bring ourselves to rigorous justice. For if any indulgent partiality, or mistaken idea of that duty which requires a kind and candid feeling to accompany the clearest discernment of defects, may be permitted to beguile our judgment out of the decisions of jutsice in favour of others, self-love, a still more indulgent and partial feeling, will not fail to practise the same beguilement in favour of ourselves. But indeed it would seem impossible, besides being absurd, to apply one set of principles to judge of ourselves, and another to judge of those with whom we have associated. Every person of tolerable education has been considerably influenced by the books he has read; and rcmembers with a kind of gratitude several of those that will promptly recur to six or ten that have contributed more to your present habits of feeling and thought than all the rest together. And here it may be observed. that when a few books of the same kind have pleased us emphatically, they too often form an almost exclusive taste, which is carried through all future reading, and is pleased only with books of that kind. It might be supposed that the scenes of nature, an amazing assemblage of phenomena if their effect were not lost through familiarity, would have a powerful influence on all opening minds, and transfuse into the internal economy of ideas and sentiment something of a character and a colour correspondent to the beauty, vicissitude, and grandeur, which continually press on the senses. On minds of genius they often have this effect; and Beattie's Minstrel may be as just as it is a captivating description of the feelings of such a spirit. But on the greatest number this influence operates feebly; you will not see the process in children, nor the result in mature persons. The charms of nature are objects only of sight and hearing, not of sensibility and imagination. And even the sight and hearing do not receive impressions sufficiently distinct or forcible for clear recollection; it is not, therefore, strange that these impressions seldom go so much deeper than the senses as to awaken pensiveness or enthusiasm, and 50 the mind with an interior permanent scenery of beauti ful images at its own command. This defect of fancy and sensibility is unfortunate amidst a creation infinitely rich with grand and beautiful objects, which imparting something more than images to a mind adapted and habituated to converse with nature, inspire an exquisite sentiment that seems like the emanation of a spirit residing in them. It is unfortunate. I have thought within these few minutes, while looking out on one of the most enchanting nights of the most interesting season of the year, and hearing the voices of a company of persons, to whom I can perceive that this soft and solemn shade over the earth, the calm sky, the beautiful stripes of clouds, the stars, and the waning moon just risen, are things not in the least more interesting than the walls, ceilings, and candle-light of a room. I feel no vanity in this instance; for probably a thousand aspects of night, not less striking than this, have appeared before my eyes and departed, not only without awakening emotion, but almost without attracting notice. If minds in general are not made to be strongly affected by the phenomena of the earth and heavens, they are however all subject to be powerfully influenced by the appearances and character of the human world. I suppose a child in Switzerland, growing up to a man, would have acquired incomparably more of the cast of his mind from the events, manners, and actions of the next village, though its inhabitants were but his occasional companions, than from all the mountain scenes, the cataracts, and every circumstance of beauty or sublimity in nature around him. We are all true to our species, Land very soon feel its importance to us, (though benevolence be not the basis of the interest,) far beyond the importance of any thing we see besides. You may I have observed how instantly even children will turn their attention away from any of the more ample aspects of nature, however rare or striking, if human objects present themselves to view in any active manner. This leaning to our kind' brings each individual not only under the influence attending direct companionship with a few, but under the operation of numberless influences, from all the moral diversities of which he is a spectator in the living world,-a complicated, though often insensible tyranny, of which every fashion, folly, and vice, may exercise its part. Some persons would be able, in the review of life, to recollect very strong and influential impressions made, in almost the first years of it, by some of the facts which they witnessed in surrounding society. But whether the operation on us of the plastic power of the community began with impressions of extraordinary force or not, it has been prolonged through the whole course of our acquaintance with mankind. It is no little effect for the living world to have had on us, that very many of our present opinions are owing to what we have seen and experienced in it. That thinking which has involuntarily been kept in exercise upon it, however remiss and desultory, could not fail to result in a number of settled notions, which may be said to be shaped upon its facts and practices. We could not be in sight of it, and in intercourse with it, without the formation of opinions adjusted to what we found in it; and thus far it has been the creator of our mental economy. But its operation has not stopped here. It will not confine itself to occupying the understanding, and yield to be a mere subject for judgments to be formed upon; but all the while that its judge is directing upon it the exercise of his opinion, it is re-actively throwing on him various moral influences and infections. LETTER III. ration of this new cause in one certain manner, (since It is easy to imagine the impression of a few atrocious facts on a mind of ardent passions converting a humane horror of cruelty into the vindictive fanaticism of Montbar the Buccaneer; and I have known instances of a similar effect, in a fainter degree. A person of gentler sensibility, by accidentally witnessing a scene of distress of which none of the circumstances caused disgust toward the sufferers, or indignation against others as the cause of the sorrow, having once tasted the pleaVery powerful Impressions sometimes from particular Facts, sure of soothing woes which perhaps death alone can tending to form discriminated Characters-Yet very few remove, might be led to seek other instances of disstrongly discriminated and individual Characters foundtress, acquire both an aptitude and a partiality for the Most Persons belong to general classes of Character-Im-friendly office, and become a pensive philanthropist. mense Number and Diversity of Impressions, of indefinitely The extreme disgust, excited by some extravagance of various tendency, which the moral Being has undergone in the course of Life-Might be expected that such a Confu- ostentatious wealth, or some excess of dissipated frivosion of Influences would not permit the Formation of any lity, and awaked again at every succeeding and inferior settled Character-That such a Character is, nevertheless, instance of the same kind, with a much stronger averacquired and maintained, is owing to some one leading De- sion than would have been excited in these inferior intermination, given by whatever means, to the Mind, gene- stances, if the disgusted feeling did not run into the rally in early Life-Common self-deceptive Belief that we vestiges of the first indelible impression, may produce have maintained moral Rectitude and the Exercise of sound a cynic or a miser, a recluse or a philosopher. NumReason under the Impressions that have been forming our berless other illustrations might be brought to show Characters. how much the characters of human beings, entering on life, with such unwarned carelessness of heart, are at the mercy of the incalculable influences which may strike them from any point of the surrounding world. A person, capable of being deeply interested, and who is accustomed to reflect on his feelings, will have observed in himself this subjection to the influences of what has been presented to him in society; and will acknowledge that in one or a few instances they have seemed, at the time, of sufficient force to go far toward new-moulding the whole habit of the mind. Recollect vour own experience. After witnessing some remarkable transaction, or some new and strange department of life and manners, or some striking disclosure of character, or after listening to some extraordinary conversation, or impressive recital of facts, you have been conscious that what you have heard or seen has given your mind some one strong determination, of a nature resulting from the quality of that which has made the impression. Though the dispositions already existing must no doubt have been prepared to receive the ope It is true that, notwithstanding so many influences are acting on men, and some of them apparently of a kind and of a force to produce in their subjects a striking peculiarity, comparatively few characters determinately marked from all around them are found to arise. In looking on a large company of persons whose dispositions and pursuits are substantially alike, we cannot doubt that several of them have met with circumstances, of which the natural tendency must have been to give the character of those whom they now so much resemthem a determination of mind extremely dissimilar to *So great an effect, however, as this last, is perhaps rarely experienced from even the most powerful causes, except In early life. † See Abbe Raynal's History of the Indies |