her ardent studies. She betrayed in the common
intercourse of life, all the graces she had taught herself; she charmed
her friends, and even softened her barbarous mother; in a word, the
enthusiastic girl was an actress without knowing what an actress was.

In this case of the youth of genius, are we to conclude that the
accidental view of a young actress practising her studies imparted the
character of Clairon? Could a mere chance occurrence have given birth to
those faculties which produced a sublime tragedian? In all arts there are
talents which may be acquired by imitation and reflection,--and thus far
may genius be educated; but there are others which are entirely the result
of native sensibility, which often secretly torment the possessor, and
which may even be lost from the want of development, dissolved into a
state of languor from which many have not recovered. Clairon, before she
saw the young actress, and having yet no conception of a theatre--for she
had never entered one--had in her soul that latent faculty which creates a
dramatic genius. "Had I not felt like Dido," she once exclaimed, "I could
not have thus personified her!"

The force of impressions received in the warm susceptibility of the
childhood of genius, is probably little known to us; but we may perceive
them also working in the _moral character_, which frequently discovers
itself in childhood, and which manhood cannot always conceal, however it
may alter. The intellectual and the moral character are unquestionably
closely allied. ERASMUS acquaints us, that Sir THOMAS MORE had something
ludicrous in his aspect, tending to a smile,--a feature which his
portraits preserve; and that he was more inclined to pleasantry and
jesting, than to the gravity of the chancellor. This circumstance he
imputes to Sir Thomas More "being from a child so delighted with humour,
that he seemed to be even born for it." And we know that he died as he had
lived, with a jest on his lips. The hero, who came at length to regret
that he had but one world to conquer, betrayed the majesty of his restless
genius when but a youth. Had Aristotle been nigh when, solicited to join
in the course, the princely boy replied, that "He would run in no career
where kings were not the competitors," the prescient tutor might have
recognised in his pupil the future and successful rival of Darius and
Porus.

A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by one of his
attendants, forms