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more especially with the advantage of real voice, of accommodated eloquence, and of living fympathies, over a dead letter. These advantages are fufficient; and, as the true object of education is not to render the pupil the mere copy of his preceptor, it is rather to be rejoiced in, than lamented, that various reading fhould lead him into new trains of thinking; open to him new mines of science and new incentives to virtue ; and perhaps, by a blended and compound effect, produce in him an improvement which was out of the limits of his leffons, and raise him to heights the preceptor never knew.

ESSAY

ESSAY XVI.

OF EARLY INDICATIONS OF CHARACTER.

A FEW remarks will not perhaps be unprofitably fet down, on the subject of juvenile character, and the promifing and unpromifing indications that early display themselves in the manners of youth.

Calumny has long been privileged to stalk the world at large, and to fhed its poifon upon the faireft flowers. It can fhow a very ancient title, and will not eafily fuffer ejectment. Secret refentment often delights to add new malignity to its venom; and often a mere gaiety of humour, fporting in thoughtless fallies, will fix a fting that neither time, nor all the healing arts of wifdom and virtue, fhall be able to cure. The wound rankles unfeen. The grandeft efforts of genius, and the purest energies of benevolence, thus become enfeebled, difcouraged, annihilated. Nothing more easy than to barb the flander; nothing more difficult than to extract the dart. The whole appearance of the man becomes difcoloured and disfigured; all his virtues are tranf

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transformed into vices; all his actions are mifreprefented, misunderstood and vilified. It matters not with how much generofity he fets himself to act the glafs of truth fhall never be turned on him; nor fhall he in any instance obtain justice.

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But calumny is doubly execrable and unmanly, when it attacks the first promifing dawnings of youth. A man fufficiently adult, has attained fome ftrength, and can cope with it. He can plead his own caufe. He has tried the paffions of men, and the magic of undaunted truth; and ufes both, as tools with the powers of which he is acquainted. Befide, a man must expect fome time or other to encounter adverfity: if he be hardly preffed upon, and unjustly dealt 'with, his cafe is indeed worthy of regret; but it is the lot of man, and the condition under which he was born. It is worse than this, when a weak and defenceless youth is made the butt of these attacks. It is more worthy of regret, when he is refufed the common period of probation; is maimed and difmounted at the very entrance of the courfe; and fent to languish long years of a baffled existence, with his limbs already withered and fhrunk up by the fhocks of calumny. That men fhould be condemned unjustly, is that which ought not to be; that they should be con

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diced imagination, convert the little starts, the idle fallies and the temporary deviations of an unformed mind, into inexpiable errors.

It often happens that irregularities which ought perhaps rather to be regarded as indications of future greatnefs, are converted into fubjects of pitiful lamentation and odious condolence, when the spectator is a man of narrow morals, and of principles of judgment abfurdly frigid and fevere.

The moft abun

The youth refpecting whom I fhould augur most favourably, is he, in whom I obferve fome ufelefs luxuriance, and fome qualities, which terrify, while they delight me. dant endowments will one day affume a regularity and arrangement, which endowments in the next degree inferior are unable to attain. Sobriety, conftancy, an awful and wide-fpreading tranquillity, that might in one point of view be compared with that of the Grand Southern Pacific Ocean, are perhaps in fome degree the characteristics of a mind of the firft order. It is not ruffled by every puff of air; it holds on its way with a majestic courfe; it is felf-balanced and felf-centred; always great, always worthy, and always fublime.

But this is not the cafe with a mind, in which as yet the hints and capabilities of greatness only

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The fault for the moft part, when we speak of the merits of our neighbour, is not, that we say what we think; but that, for want of practice and skill, we do not fay what we think; we do not fuit our words to the measure of our fentiments; we do not call our minds into operation to compare our opinions with the grounds of our opinions, and our phrases with both. We communicate to our hearers fentiments that we do not entertain. We debauch even our own judgments, while we speak; and, instead of analysing, arranging and fashioning our conclufions as we ought, become impaffioned by liftening to the found of our own voice, fubject our matter to our words, not the words to the matter, and talk ourselves into extravagancies, which we did not think of in the outfet, but which we have not afterwards the courage and candour to retract, either to others or to ourselves.

What is to be demanded therefore in behalf of the young, is not, that we should refrain from judging them, or fear to utter our judgments; but that we fhould indefatigably endeavour to form true principles of judgment, that we should allow ourselves in no hafty conclufions, that, recollecting the mutability of youth, we should be reluctant to pass a final condemnation, and above all, that we should not, from the force of a jaun

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