Even a discerning parent or master has entirely failed to develope the genius of the youth, who has afterwards ranked among eminent men; we ought as little to decide from early unfavourable appearances, as from inequality of talent.

The great ISAAC BARROW'S father used to say, that if it pleased God to take from him any of his children, he hoped it might be Isaac, as the least promising; and during the three years Barrow passed at the Charter-house, he was remarkable only for the utter negligence of his studies and of his person.

The mother of SHERIDAN, herself a literary female, pronounced early that he was the dullest and most hopeless of her sons.

BODMER, at the head of the literary class in Switzerland, who had so frequently discovered and animated the literary youths of his country, could never detect the latent genius of GESNER: after a repeated examination of the young man, he put his parents in despair with the hopeless award that a mind of so ordinary a cast must confine itself to mere writing and accompts.

One fact, however, Bodmer had overlooked when he pronounced the fate of our poet and artist--the dull youth, who could not retain barren words, discovered an active fancy in the image of things.