We can study no life intelligently except in its relation to causes and results. Character is the chief element; for it is both a result and a cause--the result of all the elements and forces that combined to form it, and the chief cause of all that is accomplished by its possessor.... Every character is the joint product of nature and nurture. By the first, we mean those inborn qualities of body and mind inherited from parents, or rather from a long line of ancestors. Who shall estimate the effect of those latent forces, enfolded in the spirit of a new-born child, which may date back centuries, and find their origin in the unwritten history of remote ancestors--forces, the germs of which, enveloped in the solemn mystery of life, have been transmitted silently, from generation to generation, and never perish? All-cherishing Nature, provident and unforgetting, gathers up all these fragments that nothing may be lost, but that all may reappear in new combinations. Each new life is thus the "heir of all the ages," the possessor of qualities which only the events of life can unfold. By the second element, nurture, culture, we designate all those influences which act upon this initial force of character, to retard or strengthen its development. There has been much discussion to determine which of these elements plays the more important part in the formation of character. The truth doubtless is, that sometimes the one and sometimes the other is the greater force; but so far as life and character are dependent upon voluntary action, the second is no doubt the element of chief importance. [From the Same.] Not enough attention has been paid to the marked difference between the situation and possibilities of a life developed here in the West, during the first half of the present century, and those of a life nurtured and cultivated in an old and settled community like that of New England. Consider, for example, the measureless difference between the early surroundings of John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln. Both were possessed of great natural endowments. Adams was blessed with parents whose native force of character, and whose vigorous and thorough culture have never been surpassed by any married pair in America. Young Adams was thoroughly taught by his mother until he had completed his tenth year; and then, accompanying his father to France, he spent two years in a training-school at Paris and three years in the University at Leyden. After two years of diplomatic service, under the skilful guidance of his father's hand, he returned to America, and devoted three years to study at Harvard, where he was graduated at the age of twenty-one; and, three years later, was graduated in the law, under the foremost jurist of his time. With such parentage and such opportunities, who can wonder that by the time he reached the meridian of his life, he was a man of immense erudition, and had honored every great office in the gift of his country?