essentially as well as in outward seeming | reserved for this birth-hour, on the stroke from Anthony Trollope the man. The of which it eagerly seizes on the relations one developed into the other, but it was which crowd in upon it from the novel by a sudden start and not by a gradual elements around." That passage conveys, process, just as the tadpole, which is not in better words, precisely the idea we a frog, but something quite different, be- endeavored to make plain, with the exlonging, indeed, to a different branch of ception that we think the change a little the animal kingdom, becomes suddenly a greater than breaking-forth, the actual frog. People are so possessed with the nature being occasionally modified, as we, phrase, "The boy is father of the man," though rarely, sometimes see it modified that many thought this a little absurd, half in maturer life, under religious or other a dozen assured us that no such change influence, and that we should put the poscould occur in a human being, and one sible time of its occurrence much later. excellent man gravely warned us that if a The man's difference from the boy is solution of continuity could occur in life, sometimes not established till he is fiveso it might in death, and then what would and-twenty, unless circumstances have become of continuous identity in another been very favorable to independence, world? We need not say we intended either of judgment or of action. Trollope nothing so absurd as this gentleman im- was a man before his true nature appeared, agined, but we did intend to say that the even in respect of efficiency for the work difference, the radical difference, between of life; and we have noted the alteration the boy and the man, which constantly in men older than he, and that, too, in startles as well as puzzles preceptors, is the peculiarities we think least liable to seldom sufficiently reckoned on, especially change, such as temper and frankness. by parents, whose experience of their It seems impossible to most parents that children is often so great and so minute the violent lad should become gentle-temas to be delusive. It is frequently a posi-pered, and the reserved lad frank; but tive change, as it was in Trollope's case, as if the nature had been compressed in a case, subsequently to be burst; and while compressed, lacked qualities which could only come to it after its release. We are pleased, as well as amused, to find that this idea, which was a product of con siderable experience, is confirme by Dr. James Martineau, who has probably much greater experience, having, like all religious teachers of mark, been compelled to make a special study of the young. In the course of the remarkable sketch of his family history, and of his differences with his sister Harriet, which he published in the Daily News of Tuesday, Dr. Martineau says: "If I do not misconstrue a class of facts frequently noticed, there are and among them some of the most energetic and gifted in the endwhich remain through childhood in a kind of chrysalis state; and first begin to quiver with their intdneed life, and at length break forth upon the wing in the second half of their second decade. As that is also the time when young people often leave the early nest for some new experience, bringing them into contact with fresh types of character and manners, the change of scene is apt to get all the credit of the marvellous hues and vivid flight now taken by the creature once so colorless and dull. But the metamorphosis would not be wrought upon a brother or sister differently tempered. It is essentially the unfolding of an inward nature

natures

both changes do in rare instances manifestly occur. There is no reason, indeed, why they should not. The relaxation of pressure upon the inner nature, which is often the consequence of independence or other change of circumstances, not only allows the wings of the mind, as Dr. Martineau says, to be unfolded, but permits them to grow where they were not before. Tying up a child's limb may only distort it; but it may also take out of the general frame its inherent vigor, its natural health, its characteristic and special power, and that larger result of compres sion is true also of the mind. It is not only genius which requires room, but sometimes ordinary nature also. Ten per cent. of the most ordinary natures would have been crushed out of shape by a boy. hood like that of John Stuart Mill as com pletely as that of a Shelley or a Coleridge would have been. The crust over the mind, though it often compresses only its powers, - -a phenomenon known in every third household, where Tom's success in life never ceases to cause a mild surprise,

- sometimes also squeezes and deadens, or suspends vitality in the essential character. The difference between Prince Frederick and Frederick the Great was not only one of mental strength, and though in part he may have hidden himself deliberately, in part also, when the flagstone was lifted by his father's death, his character changed.

We wonder whether the converse differ

ence often occurs, and a character injured | moval of the compression which once fell by want of compression, of the discipline upon children with the irresistible and allwhich reveals that there are "musts" in pervading weight of an atmosphere. One the world, ever recovers strength under can easily imagine that if life, with its the pressure of actual life, so that the hard facts such as the necessity of eatlight nature becomes serious and strong. ing, of obedience to "musts," and of We have not seen that, and do not re- standing alone - restores this old influmember in biography a clear instance of ence, the lightsome youth of our day will it; but Shakespeare knew human nature, display as men, changes at least as startand he thought it perfectly possible. If ling, though in an opposite direction, as it is, and if the occurrence is frequent, the those which have struck Dr. Martineau relief to the fathers of this generation will and ourselves. Some of our Prince Hals be considerable. There is an impression will become Henry the Fifths. The altercurrent, derived principally, we think, from ation will be attributed to experience, and satiric literature, that the defect of the work, and contact with the unsympa new generation is premature manliness, thetic; but it will not be wholly due to that all children, boys more especially, those causes, but to the fact that pressure because they are more examined, display has brought out qualities only existing "old heads on young shoulders," and that before in the germ. The man will not be youthful priggishness is on the increase. in all instances the lad developed, but the That is not, however, the opinion of most lad transformed. He is not really transschoolmasters and tutors, or of the few formed, of course; but neither is he, as men we have encountered who have been we contend, only grown, but rather he has compelled to study unusual numbers of enlarged, and new characteristics have lads. They say that the enormous change come out as if they had been created. which has occurred in household disci- The potentiality of hardness must be in pline a change which extends to all the clay; but still, pottery is not clay only. classes, and has immensely modified soci- We have most of us witnessed this change ety while it has made the young dis - if not in others, then in ourselves — as tinctly happier, and to a most curious regards one quality, patience; and why degree conscious of their happiness, and should not there be others? Many among conscious, too, that being dependent on us do not grow patient, so much as acquire their irresponsibility, it will soon end, the faculty of patience; and this often in has left them with characters altogether conscious, yet very sudden leaps. The lighter, weaker, and less capable of steady pressure, whatever it be, has annealed endurance. They have not learned in the that side of the character, until it is as same degree to govern the will, they are different from the previous character as more reluctant to face difficulty, and they pottery from clay. Sharp suffering is the shrink from the great drawback to work quickest pressure, and the one most recing life its inevitable monotony, with a ognized; but the hydraulic pressure of life painful deficiency in fortitude. They are acts too, and nearly or quite as effectually. not shallow, for they assimilate knowledge, The loss is mainly one of time; and though and sometimes like it; they think with a it is impossible for parents to think so, clearness quite unknown in the past, and that is not always loss. The longer childthey observe as if they were old; but hood is after all something to the good, there is something lacking in the charac- and there is pliability in gristly bones. ter which the older and harsher processes Most boys of to-day are ready for anything of bringing-up did produce. They were from learning Arabic to driving cattle, and vexing processes, many of them, and they for the work of life that is a set-off against seem to parents of to-day quite out of the the three or four years which seem to be question, and to the young tyrannical; but lost from a certain want of "breeze,” in they yielded their fruit. If the clay were the builders' sense, visible in so many conscious, it would probably not like the characters. It is odd to find the moth in wheel, and would certainly detest the fire; the cocoon, and the silk-spinner out of it; but fire and the wheel make the pipkin, but that happens with the human worm, and the pipkin is water-tight, and until and only strikes us because we are accusbroken the most durable thing known. tomed to another sequence. The one An Etruscan vase of pottery would last change, when we have once seen it occur like a diamond, if only it were let alone, or recognized that it can occur, is as little and it is only clay. There is a want of miraculous as the other. The stupid lad hardness, or rather hardsettedness, in the becomes the brilliant novelist. Why not new race which perplexes the elder one, the blithesome lad the steadiest of plod and which is undoubtedly due to the re- ders?

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