efforts, born of reason,
and which, to one looking upon life from any superficial stand-point,
seem to have all to do with its conduct, that there runs the
undercurrent of disposition, which is born of Nature, which is cradled
and nurtured with us in our infancy, which is itself a general choice,
branching out into our specific choices of certain directions and aims
among all opposite directions and aims, and which, although we rarely
recognize its important functions, is in all cases the arbiter of our
destiny. And in the very word _disposition_ is indicated the finality of
its arbitraments as contrasted with all _proposition_.

Now, with respect to this disposition: Nature furnishes its basis; but
it is the external structure of circumstance, built up or building about
childhood,--to shelter or imprison,--which, more than all else, gives it
its determinate character; and though this outward structure may in
after-life be thoroughly obliterated, or replaced by its
opposite,--porcelain by clay, or clay by porcelain,--yet will the
tendencies originally developed remain and hold a sway almost
uninterrupted over life. And, generally, the happy influences that
preside over the child may be reduced under three heads: first, a genial
temperament,--one that naturally, and of its own motion, inclines toward
a centre of peace and rest rather than toward the opposite centre of
strife; secondly, profound domestic affections; and, thirdly, affluence,
which, although of all three it is the most negative, the most material
condition, is yet practically the most important, because of the degree
in which it is necessary to the full and unlimited prosperity of the
other two. For how frequent are the cases in which the happiest of
temperaments are perverted by the necessities of toil, so burdensome to
tender years, or in which corroding anxieties, weighing upon parents'
hearts, check the free play of domestic love!--and in all cases where
such limitations are present, even in the gentlest form, there must be a
cramping up of the human organization and individuality somewhere; and
everywhere, and under all circumstances, there must be sensibly felt the
absence of that leisure which crowns and glorifies the affections of
home, making them seem the most like summer sunshine, or rather like a
sunshine which knows no season, which is an eternal presence in the
soul.

As regards all these three elements, De Quincey's childhood was
prosperous