s, from that day he abandoned for ever the occupations of commerce,
dedicating himself to literature. PROCTOR, the lost Phidias of our
country, would often say, that he should never have quitted his mercantile
situation, but for the accidental sight of Barry's picture of "Venus
rising from the Sea;" a picture which produced so immediate an effect on
his mind, that it determined him to quit a lucrative occupation. Surely we
cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such instant
decisions, but by the principle of that predisposition which only waits
for an occasion to declare itself.

Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering itself in youth.
In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits precocity. "Whatever a young
man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This
remark was made by HARTLEY, who has related an anecdote of the infancy of
his genius, which indicated the manhood. He declared to his daughter that
the intention of writing a book upon the nature of man, was conceived in
his mind when he was a very little boy--when swinging backwards and
forwards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old; he was then
meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for what
future end. Such was the true origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his
celebrated book on "The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." JOHN
HUNTER conceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his last
day formed the subject of his inquiries and experiments, when he was very
young; for at that period of life, Mr. Abernethy tells us, he began his
observations on the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his
opinions.

A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, has supplied me with
a remark highly deserving notice. It is an observation that will generally
hold good, that the most important systems of theory, however late they
may be published, have been formed at a very early period of life. This
important observation may be verified by some striking facts. A most
curious one will be found in Lord BACON'S letter to Father Fulgentio,
where he gives an account of his projecting his philosophy thirty years
before, during his youth. MILTON from early youth mused on the composition
of an epic. DE THOU has himself told us, that from his tender youth his
mind was full of the idea of composing a history of his own times; and his
whole life was passed in pre