Surely we cannot account for such sudden effusions of the mind, and such instant decisions, but by the principle of that predisposition which only waits for an occasion to declare itself.
Abundant facts exhibit genius unequivocally discovering itself in youth.
In general, perhaps, a master-mind exhibits precocity.

"Whatever a young man at first applies himself to, is commonly his delight afterwards." This remark was made by HARTLEY, who has related an anecdote of the infancy of his genius, which indicated the manhood.

He declared to his daughter that the intention of writing a book upon the nature of man, was conceived in his mind when he was a very little boy--when swinging backwards and forwards upon a gate, not more than nine or ten years old; he was then meditating upon the nature of his own mind, how man was made, and for what future end.

Such was the true origin, in a boy of ten years old, of his celebrated book on "The Frame, the Duty, and the Expectation of Man." JOHN HUNTER conceived his notion of the principle of life, which to his last day formed the subject of his inquiries and experiments, when he was very young; for at that period of life, Mr.Abernethy tells us, he began his observations on the incubated egg, which suggested or corroborated his opinions.
A learned friend, and an observer of men of science, has supplied me with a remark highly deserving notice.

It is an observation that will generally hold good, that the most important systems of theory, however late they may be published, have been formed at a very early period of life.