It was remarked of him, even as a boy, that his passions were difficult to move; but that, like a rock hanging on a mountain's brow, their tranquillity once disturbed, they carried all before them in their course; and years, as they passed over his head, by teaching him greater endurance, rendered his anger, when excited, but the more dangerous. It was not like the quick flash of the lightning, hasty and vehement, but as short-lived as it is bright; but it was that calm, considerate, sweeping vengeance, which, like the snow that gathers silently on the edge of the precipice, descends to overwhelm all that is beneath. He was unrelenting too, for he never dreamed that mercy might be combined with justice. He would never have pleaded for himself, and he could not be expected to feel for others. His youth passed away as the flowing of some undiscovered river, whose strange waters are never fretted by the barks of far-exploring man. He knew nothing of any world but the world of his own mind; and his only commune was with his own feelings, which were as things apart. And yet there was a bitterness in standing thus alone. There was a pain even in, the solitude of his own thoughts: and he strove to assimilate them to something which at least _had been_. He was fond to pore over the records of ancient virtue, and the history of those firm inflexible beings, who rooted out from their bosom all the soft verdure of the heart's kinder feelings, and raised in its place a cold shrine to unrelenting justice. Here only he seemed to have imagination: and here would he ponder and dream, till he wondered that such a state of things did not still exist. He would fain have thought that virtues like these contained within themselves the principles of immortality. He forgot that historians, even when they do not augment the worth of what they relate, to render it the more worthy of relation, do not seek to commemorate what is petty. So that the _few great actions_ alone are recorded, while the multitude of meannesses are forgotten. Like the fabled eagle, that is fond to gaze upon the sun, he fixed his eyes alone on what was bright. He would ask himself, Why might not France produce a Brutus or a Cato? Was the soul of man degenerate? Had it lost that power which sustained it in the inspiring days of ancient glory? No! He felt the same spirit stirring within _his_ bosom, and he resolved that he, at least, would live a Roman. Such were the aspirations of his youth; but they were mixed with little of that wild warm glow which animates the enthusiast. His feelings, like the waters of a deep mountain-lake, were calm and cold, though they were clear and profound. When he did feel, he felt strongly; but the lighter things of the world passed him by as if they had not been.