him of his duty in an imperious style, and in measured sentences;
if he is a member of a legislature, even there he receives his
lessons, and is told, either in phrases of well-conceived irony,
or by the exhibition of facts and reasonings which take him by
surprise, that he is not altogether the person he deemed himself
to be. But he does not mind it. Like Iago in the play, he
"knows his price, and, by the faith of man, that he is worth no
worse a place" than that which he occupies. He finds out the
value of the check he receives, and lets it "pass by him like the
idle wind"--a mastery, which the schoolboy, however he may affect
it, never thoroughly attains to.

But it unfortunately happens, that, before he has arrived at that
degree of independence, the fate of the individual is too often
decided for ever. How are the majority of men trampled in the
mire, made "hewers of wood, and drawers of water," long, very
long, before there was an opportunity of ascertaining what it was
of which they were capable! Thus almost every one is put in the
place which by nature he was least fit for: and, while perhaps a
sufficient quantity of talent is extant in each successive
generation, yet, for want of each man's being duly estimated, and
assigned his appropriate duty, the very reverse may appear to be
the case. By the time that they have attained to that sober
self-confidence that might enable them to assert themselves, they
are already chained to a fate, or thrust down to a condition,
from which no internal energies they possess can ever empower
them to escape.


SECTION II.