But while the quality of a man’s mind may be dependent upon the gifts of God or the culture of his infancy—while we may trace up from the last effort of matured greatness to the earliest movement of the nascent powers, the influence of the first directing causes, and see how qualities were improved and greatness achieved; while all the colors of the mind seem to be derived from infancy, and the fame of the youth is made obviously referable to the culture of the nursery and the fireside circle, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that even in later years, when the tone or the color of the mind becomes fixed, when the qualities have insured fame and eminence, some unseen, and by the world unsuspected, cause operates to disturb the onward course, impede the progress, lessen the influence, and thus diminish the greatness of the gifted one that has been “the observed of all observers,” as a projecting rock divides the current at the mouth of a stream, or an accumulated bar prevents a depth and destroys the usefulness of a river which has flowed steadily, beautifully and profitably from its source in the mountain to its entrance into the sea. And, not to drop the simile, we see some men moving on in constantly augmenting consequence, swaying public opinion and enlightening public sentiment, and seeming to bid fair to swallow up in their fame the credit of all, by making all tributary to them, when suddenly they sink from observation; drop from the course they have pursued, and are lost to sight, just as the rivers of Florida flow along with augmented volume toward the Gulf, as if to gather themselves into a glorious estuary, when suddenly they sink into the earth, and are lost amid the subterranean caverns that abound in a country of such peculiar geological formation, and like The Niger escape the keen traveler’s eye, By plunging or changing the clime. We see around us numerous instances of this kind of autumnal failure. History is full of them. Our country presents cases of remarkable strength. And as it acquires years and augmented numbers, more will present themselves, and as the means of observation increase, and publicity becomes greater, of course attention will be more drawn to the fact; and perhaps the causes, too, will be better understood, I do not know that they will be avoided; if we are right in our conjectures as to their causes, then we fear that they will continue—and while they continue they will produce like effects.