out into idle sallies and escapes, and is like the full-fed steed
that manifests his wantonness in a thousand antics and ruades.
But this is a temporary extravagance. He presently becomes as
wise and calculating, as the schoolboy was before him.

The human being then, that has attained a certain stature,
watches and poises his situation, and considers what he may do
with impunity. He ventures at first with no small diffidence,
and pretends to be twice as assured as he really is. He
accumulates experiment after experiment, till they amount to a
considerable volume. It is not till he has passed successive
lustres, that he attains that firm step, and temperate and
settled accent, which characterise the man complete. He then no
longer doubts, but is ranged on the full level of the ripened
members of the community.

There is therefore little room for wonder, if we find the same
individual, whom we once knew a sheepish and irresolute
schoolboy, that hung his head, that replied with inarticulated
monotony, and stammered out his meaning, metamorphosed into a
thoroughly manly character, who may take his place on the bench
with senators, and deliver a grave and matured opinion as well as
the best. It appears then that the trial and review of
full-grown men is not altogether so disadvantageous to the
reckoning of our common nature, as that of boys at school.

It is not however, that the full-grown man is not liable to be
checked, reprimanded and rebuked, even as the schoolboy is. He
has his wife to read him lectures, and rap his knuckles; he has
his master, his landlord, or the mayor of his village, to tell