The captain or leader of his schoolmates is not to be disregarded; but it is the sequestered boy who may chance to be the artist or the literary character.

Some facts which have been recorded of men of genius at this period are remarkable.

We are told by Miss Stewart that JOHNSON, when a boy at the free-school, appeared "a huge overgrown, misshapen stripling;" but was considered as a stupendous stripling: "for even at that early period of life, Johnson maintained his opinions with the same sturdy, dogmatical, and arrogant fierceness." The puerile characters of Lord BOLINGBROKE and Sir ROBERT WALPOLE, schoolfellows and rivals, were observed to prevail through their after-life; the liveliness and brilliancy of Bolingbroke appeared in his attacks on Walpole, whose solid and industrious qualities triumphed by resistance.

A parallel instance might be pointed out in two great statesmen of our own days; in the wisdom of the one, and the wit of the other--men whom nature made rivals, and time made friends or enemies, as it happened.

A curious observer, in looking over a collection of the Cambridge poems, which were formerly composed by its students, has remarked that "Cowley from the first was quaint, Milton sublime, and Barrow copious." If then the characteristic disposition may reveal itself thus early, it affords a principle which ought not to be neglected at this obscure period of youth.
Is there then a period in youth which yields decisive marks of the character of genius?
The natures of men are as various as their fortunes.
Some, like diamonds, must wait to receive their splendour from the slow touches of the polisher, while others, resembling pearls, appear at once born with their beauteous lustre.
Among the inauspicious circumstances is the feebleness of the first attempts; and we must not decide on the talents of a young man by his first works.