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There is no sadder sight, to us, than intellectual precocity. The fine-grained, delicate organization, with an eye of fire, a hot brain, and cold, damp feet—the fond hope of short-sighted parents, urged on by them to shun all recreation, and to struggle for the prizes of the class, blooms early, but fades in the heat of the summer: he never fulfils the promise of his boyhood. It is said of him, "Ah! if he had lived—he died early."—But the knotty headed, hardy-visaged urchin, slower to learn, and swifter to do mischief,—a boy in his boyhood, waiting for his manhood before he plays the man, may grow to a ripe old age, calm, honorable, and wise. Nor need he be a blockhead either. Many of the great of the earth have passed for numskulls in school, because they grew so slowly. Yet in all that we know of growth, slow growth is the best. It is not the long leaping and the lofty vaulting which make the athlete. These are but the expenditure of that force which long-continued moderate exercise, with patient care and cleanliness, has developed. Far better is it that the childish soul be kept warm and dreamy in its pleasant flesh, and slowly brought to light with a view to making a good and happy man, than to be rashly expanded like a thin bubble, to glow for a moment with some rainbow promise, and then to burst into the upturned and admiring eyes of its projectors. How often this eager haste has written on the mournful monuments of genius, "whom the gods love die young!"

And had we the wit and patience to restrain us, we are all of us living too fast. This is part of the youth of our immortality; we have no need to hurry, for