110 CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 



Miltons, and bloodless Cromwells do not sleep in the 

 graves of the rude forefathers of the hamlet. Burns 

 was not a peasant ; his father was a reading contem- 

 plative recluse ; increasing knowledge shows that his 

 ancestors filled high and responsible positions. The 

 burial-place of Thomas Carlyle contains numerous 

 heraldic evidences of distinguished forerunners. 



We may with advantage draw illustrations from 

 bodily organisation and actions. Of two men, appa- 

 rently similar in physical conformation and size, one is 

 capable of great athletic feats, the other is not. Cir- 

 cumstance, even in the form of training, has compara- 

 tively little to do with the adequacy of the one and the 

 inadequacy of the other. The explanation is, that the 

 two men possess by inheritance two wholly different 

 skeletons ; their bones are differently formed and are 

 differently put together. In one man, as in women 

 generally, the bones are more or less smooth, conse- 

 quently the muscles are attached to them with less 

 firmness, and act on them with less power. In the 

 other man's rougher bones numerous projections 

 spring out, as it were, to meet their appropriate 

 muscles, and so give to them an efficiency which 

 normal circumstance might modify but which it cannot 

 materially add to or take away. The brain and its 

 powers and properties are not less determined by 

 inheritance than are bone and muscle. It is with 

 man as with animals : no circumstance could give 

 marked swiftness to the hereditary cart-horse and its 

 progeny, or slowness and strength to the hereditary 

 racer. 



The unreflective observer may easily mistake the 

 natural succession of the phases of character which 

 attend the growth, ripening, and decay of nerve, for 



