8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



along the narrow channel, beside the playful murmurings 

 of the little brook, and the windings of its grassy borders, 

 with nothing to guide its course, except the first lessons 

 taught him by a mother, the trees shedding their blos- 

 soms over his young head, and the flowers of the brink 

 seeming to offer themselves to his hands, he w-as happy 

 with hope, and grasped eagerly at the beauties around 

 him. But the stream hurries him on, and still his hands 

 are found empty. But not so with the mind; it is this 

 which gives beauty to the rose, throws sublimity around 

 the mountain and the comet, envelopes the cascade with 

 beauty, and the heavens with grandeur. And in propor- 

 tion to the mind's breadth and depth, the store of in- 

 formation it possesses, and the accumulation and scope 

 of ideas, so are the loftiness and intensity of its en- 

 joyments. But his course through youth and manhood 

 has been along a wider and deeper flood, amid objects 

 more striking and magnificent. 



He seemed early to realize the circumstances that sur- 

 rounded him, and was fully impressed with the idea that 

 he must be the artificer of his own fame and fortune, 

 and that success could only be looked for through his own 

 exertions. 



While yet a schoolboy, he made himself a book (not 

 the one previously promised him) of clean white paper, 

 in which he daily wrote such words and sentences as he 

 happened* to hear fall from thej^ips of others, which he 

 thought contained any moral or beautiful language, that 

 might be of use to him in after life. This was followed 

 after he had ceased going to school, by keeping a record 



