

Cha] AND SYMBOLS. 43 



flourish would kill others. The brave, self-denying soul would 

 perish in the hothouse of servility : the court fop would wither 

 in the regions of bracing industry. Their roots are adapted to 

 their localities. v. 



Character Consolidated by Time. 



By far the greater number of the stones used for building and 

 road-making are much softer when first taken from the quarry 

 than after they have been long exposed to the air ; and these, 

 when once dried, may afterwards be immersed for any length of 

 time in water without becoming soft again. Hence it is found 

 desirable to shape the stones which are to be used in architecture 

 while they are yet soft and wet, and while they contain their 

 " quarry- water," as it is called ; also to break up stone intended 

 for roads when soft, and then leave it to dry in the air for 

 months that it may harden. Dr. MacCulloch mentions a sand- 

 stone in Skye, which may be moulded like dough when first 

 found ; and some simple minerals, which are rigid and as hard 

 as glass in our cabinets, are often flexible and soft in their native 

 beds : this is the case with asbestos, sahlite, tremolite, and 

 chalcedony, and it is reported also to happen in the case of the 

 beryl. The marl recently deposited at the bottom of Lake 

 Superior, in North America, is soft, and often filled with fresh- 

 water shell ; but if a piece be taken up and dried, it becomes 

 so hard that it can only be broken by a smart blow of the 

 hammer. But it is not alone in the geological world that we 

 find an illustration of the fact that character is hardened by 

 time. We see the same truth stamped upon all human ex- 

 perience. For good or evil every man's character becomes 

 consolidated by time. If it is to be shaped so as to be fit for a 

 corner-stone in the Temple of Virtue, the process of preparation 

 should begin early. History is replete with instances of men 

 whose characters might have been wrought into harmonious 

 proportions if the necessary care had been bestowed upon that 

 task at the proper stage ; characters which, in the absence of 

 the requisite shaping, became difficult to handle and unsightly 

 to gaze upon. Nor is there any deficiency in the record of those 

 other characters which, though too plastic for reliance in their 



