n his
description of the operations of the senses on the mind, a less artificial
substance. In the soils of the earth we may discover that variety of
primary qualities which we believe to exist in human minds. The botanist
and the geologist always find the nature of the strata indicative of its
productions; the meagre light herbage announces the poverty of the soil it
covers, while the luxuriant growth of plants betrays the richness of the
matrix in which the roots are fixed. It is scarcely reasoning by analogy
to apply this operating principle of nature to the faculties of men.

But while the origin and nature of that faculty which we understand by the
term Genius remain still wrapt up in its mysterious bud, may we not trace
its history in its votaries? If Nature overshadow with her wings her first
causes, still the effects lie open before us, and experience and
observation will often deduce from consciousness what we cannot from
demonstration. If Nature, in some of her great operations, has kept back
her last secrets; if Newton, even in the result of his reasonings, has
religiously abstained from penetrating into her occult connexions, is it
nothing to be her historian, although we cannot be her legislator?

CHAPTER V.

Youth of genius.--Its first impulses may be illustrated by its subsequent
actions.--Parents have another association of the man of genius than
we.--Of genius, its first habits.--Its melancholy.--Its reveries.--Its
love of solitude.--Its disposition to repose.--Of a youth distinguished
by his equals.--Feebleness of its first attempts.--Of genius not
discoverable even in manhood.--The education of the youth may not be
that of his genius.--An unsettled impulse, querulous till it finds its
true occupation.--With some, curiosity as intense a faculty as invention.
--What the youth first applies to is commonly his delight afterwards.
--Facts of the decisive character of genius.

We are entering into a fairy land, touching only shadows, and chasing the
most changeable lights; many stories we shall hear, and many scenes will
open on us; yet though realities are but dimly to be traced in this
twilight of imagination and tradition, we think that the first impulses of
genius may be often illustrated by the subsequent actions of the
individual; and whenever we find these in perfect harmony, it will be
difficult to convince us that there does not exist a secret connexion
between those first impulses and t