their dispositions or aptness for different pursuits. The boys were
standing under a hedge in the rain, and a neighbour reported to the
father the conversation he had overheard. John wished it would rain
books, for he wished to be a preacher; Bezaleel, wool, to be a clothier
like his father; Samuel, money, to be a merchant; and Edmund plums, to
be a grocer. The father took these wishes as a hint, and we are told in
the life of John Angier, the elder son, a puritan minister, that he
chose for them these different callings, in which it appears that they
settled successfully. "Whatever a young man at first applies himself to
is commonly his delight afterwards." This is an important principle
discovered by Hartley, but it will not supply the parent with any
determinate regulation how to distinguish a transient from a permanent
disposition; or how to get at what we may call the connatural qualities
of the mind. A particular opportunity afforded me some close observation
on the characters and habits of two youths, brothers in blood and
affection, and partners in all things, who even to their very dress
shared alike; who were never separated from each other; who were taught
by the same masters, lived under the same roof, and were accustomed to
the same uninterrupted habits; yet had nature created them totally
distinct in the qualities of their minds; and similar as their lives
had been, their abilities were adapted for very opposite pursuits;
either of them could not have been the other. And I observed how the
"predisposition" of the parties was distinctly marked from childhood:
the one slow, penetrating, and correct; the other quick, irritable, and
fanciful: the one persevering in examination; the other rapid in
results: the one exhausted by labour; the other impatient of whatever
did not relate to his own pursuit: the one logical, historical, and
critical; the other, having acquired nothing, decided on all things by
his own sensations. We would confidently consult in the one a great
legal character, and in the other an artist of genius. If nature had not
secretly placed a bias in their distinct minds, how could two similar
beings have been so dissimilar?

A story recorded of Cecco d'Ascoli and of Dante, on the subject of
natural and acquired genius, may illustrate the present topic. Cecco
maintained that nature was more potent than art, while Dante asserted
the contrary. To prove his principle, the great Italian bard referre