tain; and in these two are presented to us similar
situations with the greatest dissimilitude of characters.

William Pitt was the younger son of Lord Chatham; a fact of no ordinary
importance in the solution of his character, of no mean significance in
the heraldry of morals and intellect. His father's rank, fame, political
connections, and parental ambition were his mould; he was cast, rather
than grew. A palpable election, a conscious predestination controlled
the free agency, and transfigured the individuality of his mind; and
that, which he _might have been_, was compelled into that, which he _was
to be_. From his early childhood it was his father's custom to make him
stand up on a chair, and declaim before a large company; by which
exercise, practiced so frequently, and continued for so many years, he
acquired a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of
words, which must of necessity have diverted his attention from present
objects, obscured his impressions, and deadened his genuine feelings.
Not the _thing_ on which he was speaking, but the praises to be gained
by the speech, were present to his intuition; hence he associated all
the operations of his faculties with words, and his pleasures with the
surprise excited by them.

But an inconceivably large portion of human knowledge and human power is
involved in the science and management of _words_; and an education of
words, though it destroys genius, will often create, and always foster,
talent. The young Pitt was conspicuous far beyond his fellows, both at
school and at college. He was always full grown: he had neither the
promise nor the awkwardness of a growing intellect. Vanity, early
satiated, formed and elevated itself into a love of power; and in losing
this colloquial vanity he lost one of the prime links that connect the
individual with the species, too early for the affections, though not
too early for the understanding. At college he was a severe student; his
mind was founded and elemented in words and generalities, and these too
formed all the superstructure. That revelry and that debauchery, which
are so often fatal to the powers of intellect, would probably have been
serviceable to him; they would have given him a closer communion with
realities, they would have induced a greater presentness to present
objects. But Mr. Pitt's conduct was correct, unimpressibly correct. His
after-discipline in the special pleader's office, and at the ba