its
commencement, its progress, and its maturity.

It has been attempted to be established in an early part of the present
volume(82), that all men, idiots and extraordinary cases being put out
of the question, are endowed with talents, which, if rightly directed,
would shew them to be apt, adroit, intelligent and acute, in the walk
for which their organisation especially fitted them. We are bound
therefore, particularly in the morning of life, to consider every
thing that presents itself to us in the human form, with deference and
attention.

(82) See above, Essay III.

"God," saith the Preacher, "made man upright; but he hath sought out
many inventions." There is something loose and difficult of exposition
in this statement; but we shall find an important truth hid beneath its
obscurity.

Junius Brutus, in the play, says to his son,

I like thy frame: the fingers of the Gods
I see have left their mastery upon thee;
And the majestic prints distinct appear.

Such is the true description of every well-formed and healthful infant
that is born into the world.

He is placed on the threshold of existence; and an eventful journey is
open before him. For the first four or five years of life indeed he has
little apprehension of the scenes that await him. But a child of quick
apprehension early begins to have day-dreams, and to form imaginations
of the various chances that may occur to him, and the things he shall
have to do, when, according to the language of the story-books, he "goes
out to seek his fortune."

"God made man upright." Every child that is born, has within him a
concealed magazine of excellence. His heart beats for every thing that
is lovely and good; and whatever is set before him of that sort in
honest colours, rouses his emulation. By how many tokens does he prove
himself worthy of our approbation and love--the unaffected and
ingenuous sobriety with which he listens to what addresses itself to his
attention, the sweetness of his smile, his hearty laugh, the clear, bell
tones of his voice, his sudden and assured impulses, and his bounding
step!

To his own heart he promises well of himself. Like Lear in the play, he
says, "I will do such things!--What they are, yet I know not." But he is
assured, frank and light-spirited. He thinks of no disguise. He "wears
his heart upon his sleeve." He looks in the face of his seniors with
the glistening eye of confidence, and expects to