The force of impressions received in the warm susceptibility of the childhood of genius, is probably little known to us; but we may perceive them also working in the _moral character_, which frequently discovers itself in childhood, and which manhood cannot always conceal, however it may alter. The intellectual and the moral character are unquestionably closely allied. ERASMUS acquaints us, that Sir THOMAS MORE had something ludicrous in his aspect, tending to a smile,--a feature which his portraits preserve; and that he was more inclined to pleasantry and jesting, than to the gravity of the chancellor. This circumstance he imputes to Sir Thomas More "being from a child so delighted with humour, that he seemed to be even born for it." And we know that he died as he had lived, with a jest on his lips. The hero, who came at length to regret that he had but one world to conquer, betrayed the majesty of his restless genius when but a youth. Had Aristotle been nigh when, solicited to join in the course, the princely boy replied, that "He would run in no career where kings were not the competitors," the prescient tutor might have recognised in his pupil the future and successful rival of Darius and Porus. A narrative of the earliest years of Prince Henry, by one of his attendants, forms an authentic collection of juvenile anecdotes, which made me feel very forcibly that there are some children who deserve to have a biographer at their side; but anecdotes of children are the rarest of biographies, and I deemed it a singular piece of good fortune to have recovered such a remarkable evidence of the precocity of character.[A] Professor Dugald Stewart has noticed a fact in ARNAULD'S infancy, which, considered in connexion with his subsequent life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of reason. ARNAULD, who, to his eightieth year, passed through a life of theological controversy, when a child, amusing himself in the library of the Cardinal Du Perron, requested to have a pen given to him. "For what purpose?" inquired the cardinal. "To write books, like you, against the Huguenots." The cardinal, then aged and infirm, could not conceal his joy at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and placing the pen in his hand, said, "I give it you as the dying shepherd, Damcetas, bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon." Other children might have asked for a pen-- but to write against the Huguenots evinced a deeper feeling and a wider association of ideas, indicating the future polemic. [Footnote A: I have preserved this manuscript narrative in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii.]