Imagine such a nature, denied from the beginning! The parents of its youth are gone!--the brother and the sister--the father and the friend! It is destitute, utterly, of these! It is also destitute of those resources of fortune which are supposed to be sufficient to command them. It is thrown upon the protection, the charge of strangers. Not strangers--no! From strangers, perhaps, but little could be expected. It is thrown upon the care of relatives--a father's brother! Could the tie be nearer? Not well! But it had been better if strangers had been its guardians. Then it might have learned to endure more patiently. At least, it would have felt less keenly the pangs inflicted by neglect, contumely, injustice. In this situation it grows up, like some sapling torn from its parent forest, its branches hacked off, its limbs lacerated! It grows up in a stranger soil. The sharp winds assail it from every quarter. But still it lives--it grows. It grows wildly, rudely, ungracefully; but it is strong and tough, in consequence of its exposure and its trials. Its vitality increases with every collision which shakes and rends it; until, in the pathetic language of relatives unhappily burdened with such encumbrances, “it seems impossible to kill it!” I will not say that mine tried to kill me, but I do say that they took precious little care that I was not killed. The effect upon my body was good, however--the effect of their indifference. This roughening process is a part of physical training which very few parents understand. It is essential--should be insisted on--but it must not be accompanied with a moral roughening, which forces upon the mind of the pupil the conviction that the ordeal is meant for his destruction rather than for his good. There will be a recoil of the heart--a cruel recoil from the humanities--if such a conviction once fills the mind. It was this recoil which I felt! With warm affections seeking for objects of love--with feelings of hope and veneration, imploring for altars to which to attach themselves--I was commanded to go alone. The wilderness alone was open to me: what wonder if my heart grew wild and capricious even as that of the savage who dwells only amid their cheerless recesses? With a smile judiciously bestowed--with a kind word, a gentle tone, an occasional voice of earnest encouragement--my uncle and aunt might have fashioned my heart at their pleasure. I should have been as clay in the hands of the potter--a pliant willow in the grasp of the careful trainer. A nature constituted like mine is, of all others, the most flexible; but it is also, of all others, the most resisting and incorrigible. Approach it with a judicious regard to its affections, and you do with it what you please. Let it but fancy that it is the victim of your injustice, however slight, and the war is an interminable one between you!