THE old gentleman’s narrative had, I confess, grown interesting to me. I am always anxious, not only to study characters as they exist, but to learn how characters have been formed. I believe we all pay too little attention to this, when we blame men for their vices, or praise them for their virtues. If we find an oak in the forest knotted and gnarled, with his limbs distorted, and his trunk bending down to the ground instead of towering majestically to the sky, we blame not the old oak for his deformity, nor reproach him with the waste of many a long year in which he has been visited by the refreshing dews of the heaven above, and the fatness of the earth beneath. We are sure that there were causes, though we do not now perceive them, which obstructed and stunted his early growth, and made him what he is, and must now ever remain. The natural soil might be barren, his early shoots might have been cropped by the browzing sheep, or his top might be overshadowed, and the beams of the sun prevented from cherishing his growth, by some more fortunate tree, which has long since fallen before the woodman’s axe, but not till it had dried up all the vital energies of the withered old stump before us. And as it is with oaks, so, in some respects, with men. The soil in which they first strike root, the sunshine under which they grow, the influence of other minds on their early habits and opinions, are all to be considered when we sit in judgment on men in after life, and attempt to measure the praise or blame which is due to their moral or religious conduct. It is true, that man differs from the oak in this, that _he_ can take an active part in forming his own character. _He_ can change his soil, seek the sunshine, remove from evil neighbourhood, and fly from the influence of dangerous example. But how seldom has he firmness and grace for this! How truly does he resemble the oak in this, that he becomes, through life, what the early circumstances of his youth have made him! Hence, I am always anxious to know men’s histories from the very beginning. Even slight matters, in childhood, produce permanent effects; and I like to hear little anecdotes of youth, which some men regard as trivial, because I know (as a great poet has said) that “the child is father to the man,” and that education begins even with life itself. A certain French lady wished to consult a philosopher about the best mode of educating her child, and said that she was commencing at a very early period, as her child was but three years old:—“Madam,” said the philosopher, “you are beginning three years too late!”