SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. CHAPTER I. 66 HIS BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly Was fashioned to much honour. From his cradle He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one; But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer.' A PARTICULAR cast of mind and manners, as well as of form and features, may often be seen in a family. As some wild plant, by the accident of a better and a warmer soil, grows in some sheltered nook, through several varieties, into one that is fruitful, fragrant, or pleasant to the eye, so a great character may sometimes be traced back through several gradations in B his lineage, to some rude germ of his greatness. Lamartine, in "Le Civilisateur," in a short memoir of Cicero, observes: "Il est rare que le génie soit isolé dans une famille, il y montre presque toujours des germes, avant d'y faire éclore un fruit consommé. La nature élabore toujours longtemps et sourdement ses chefs-d'œuvre dans l'humanité comme dans les minéraux et les végétaux. L'homme est un être successif qui retrace et contient peut-être dans une seule âme les vertus des âmes de cent générations." Genius, in its lofty wheeling flights, may have sight of things which lie remote from the range of common vision. It may be also the safe conductor to the heart of man of many a truth which appals at first by its wild light. It may descend for a like freight into the very depths of the sea, into the very bowels of the earth. But I must be content, instead of hunting, like a truffle hound, for those finer delicacies of aroma which elude a vulgar scent, to gather from the open lap of our benignant mother earth the growths which she offers to every searcher, and to ascribe a curious phenomenon to the impressible and imitative nature of youth. A picture, a relic, a banner floating before the wondering eyes of childhood, a song, or a saying, may infuse a faith or kindle heroic aspiration. The tale which the child, holding |