Some of these facts, we conceive, afford decisive evidence of that instinct in genius, that primary quality of mind, sometimes called organization, which has inflamed a war of words by an equivocal term. We repeat that this faculty of genius can exist independent of education, and where it is wanting, education can never confer it: it is an impulse, an instinct always working in the character of "the chosen mind;" One with our feelings and our powers, And rather part of us, than ours. In the history of genius there are unquestionably many secondary causes of considerable influence in developing, or even crushing the germ--these have been of late often detected, and sometimes carried to a ridiculous extreme; but among them none seem more remarkable than the first studies and the first habits. CHAPTER VI. The first studies.--The self-educated are marked by stubborn peculiarities.--Their errors.--Their improvement from the neglect or contempt they incur.--The history of self-education in Moses Mendelssohn. --Friends usually prejudicial in the youth of genius.--A remarkable interview between Petrarch in his first studies, and his literary adviser.--Exhortation. The first studies form an epoch in the history of genius, and unquestionably have sensibly influenced its productions. Often have the first impressions stamped a character on the mind adapted to receive one, as the first step into life has often determined its walk. But this, for ourselves, is a far distant period in our existence, which is lost in the horizon of our own recollections, and is usually unobserved by others. Many of those peculiarities of men of genius which are not fortunate, and some which have hardened the character in its mould, may, however, be traced to this period. Physicians tell us that there is a certain point in youth at which the constitution is formed, and on which the sanity of life revolves; the character of genius experiences a similar dangerous period. Early bad tastes, early peculiar habits, early defective instructions, all the egotistical pride of an untamed intellect, are those evil spirits which will dog genius to its grave. An early attachment to the works of Sir Thomas Browne produced in JOHNSON an excessive admiration of that Latinised English, which violated the native graces of the language; and the peculiar style of Gibbon is traced by himself "to the constant habit of speaking one language, and writing another." The first studies of REMBRANDT affected his after-labours. The peculiarity of shadow which marks all his pictures, originated in the circumstance of his father's mill receiving light from an aperture at the top, which habituated the artist afterwards to view all objects as if seen in that magical light. The intellectual POUSSIN, as Nicholas has been called, could never, from an early devotion to the fine statues of antiquity, extricate his genius on the canvas from the hard forms of marble: he sculptured with his