[Footnote A: Kotzebue has noted the delicate attention of his mother in not only fostering his genius, but in watching its too rapid development. He says:--"If at any time my imagination was overheated, my mother always contrived to select something for my evening reading which might moderate this ardour, and make a gentler impression on my too irritable fancy."-- ED.] There is, what may be called, FAMILY GENIUS. In the home of a man of genius is diffused an electrical atmosphere, and his own pre-eminence strikes out talents in all. "The active pursuits of my father," says the daughter of EDGEWORTH, "spread an animation through the house by connecting children with all that was going on, and allowing them to join in thought and conversation; sympathy and emulation excited mental exertion in the most agreeable manner." EVELYN, in his beautiful retreat at Saye's Court, had inspired his family with that variety of taste which he himself was spreading throughout the nation. His son translated Rapin's "Gardens," which poem the father proudly preserved in his "Sylva;" his lady, ever busied in his study, excelled in the arts her husband loved, and designed the frontispiece to his "Lucretius:" she was the cultivator of their celebrated garden, which served as "an example" of his great work on "forest trees." Cowley, who has commemorated Evelyn's love of books and gardens, has delightfully applied them to his lady, in whom, says the bard, Evelyn meets both pleasures:-- The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books. The house of HALLER resembled a temple consecrated to science and the arts, and the votaries were his own family. The universal acquirements of Haller were possessed in some degree by every one under his roof; and their studious delight in transcribing manuscripts, in consulting authors, in botanising, drawing and colouring the plants under his eye, formed occupations which made the daughters happy and the sons eminent.[A] The painter STELLA inspired his family to copy his fanciful inventions, and the playful graver of Claudine Stella, his niece, animated his "Sports of Children." I have seen a print of COYPEL in his _studio_, and by his side his little daughter, who is intensely watching the progress of her father's pencil. The artist has represented himself in the act of suspending his labour to look on his child. At that moment, his thoughts were divided between two objects of his love. The character and the works of the late ELIZABETH HAMILTON were formed entirely by her brother. Admiring the man she loved, she imitated what she admired; and while the brother was arduously completing the version of the Persian Hedaya, the sister, who had associated with his morning tasks and his evening conversations, was recalling all the ideas, and pourtraying her fraternal master in her "Hindoo Rajah."