IN energetic minds truth soon changes, by domestication, into power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the product, becomes influencive in the production. To admire on principle is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.

COLERIDGE.-Biog. Literaria.

MEANWHILE, the process of education is going on, even though unobserved, and tending fast towards the ultimate fixed form of character. Character grows with a force that operates every moment; it were as easy to check the growth of a forest. You find that to counteract any one of its determined tendencies, is a task of hard and recurring labor. Even its slightest propensity, when opposed, seems inspirited with the energy of the whole.

JOHN FOSTER.

CHAPTER XI.

The Periods of Suggestion, Susceptibility, Germination and Growth-Importance of making the most of these periods, each in their season.

In the possession of youth, with all its opportunities and capacities, as the seed period of life, a responsibility is laid upon us, and a power put into our hands, of the preciousness of which, there is rarely any realization, till the advantages are beyond our recall. There can be little doubt that most persons settle the question even of their eternal destiny, while young. It is the time of roots and seeds, the time of foundations, the time of fountains and of laws, the time of principles and prophecies, that are to be developed and fulfilled, in the man and in the angel, good or bad. It is the time of quick and vivid sensibility to all impressions from abroad, whether of good or evil; the imitative time of our being, and the reproducing time of examples; the time of intense feeling, and of energy and impulse in following the heart, and carrying out its purposes.

A good thing inwrought while the being is in this impressible and plastic state, wrought amid the intensity of youthful enthusiasm, is as an element of nature. Is it safe to be careless of such a period? Shall a man let the metal cool, before he puts

it to its intended shape? Must not the figure of the die be stamped upon the metal, or the form of the mould be given to it, while it is plastic with heat? The same image and superscription may indeed be attempted later; but it will be scarcely legible, or it can be accomplished only by an amount of force not likely to be brought to bear upon it. Such is the difference between the impressible period, the susceptible period of early life, and the confirmed and comparatively immovable period of manhood.

If

It is a law of the seed-period, that whatever the soul receives deep into itself during that season, shall grow up and be developed as a part of itself, and shall form the character at the period of harvest. One season cannot be changed for another, the summer for the spring, nor the autumn for the summer. the seed-period be neglected or abused, and then afterwards at the period of harvest, or what ought to have been that period, the man attempts the recurrence of the seed-period, it will be a failure; the seed will not germinate, but rots, or if it strives to germinate, it dies without fruit, without becoming a fixture in the character.

Almost everything that falls into the ground, but just goes to the nourishment and strengthening of that which had got its fixture and its growth before; or if the seed scattered seem to take root on its own account, it never rises to anything better than a thin, feeble, stunted underbrush around the trunks and beneath the shadow of the old great trees. After those fixtures come to a certain height and age, they tyrannize over everything else in the character. We go on, indeed, sowing seed all the way through life; and each successive period of life is in most impressive reality a period of probation and of seeds.

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for the next period; because what we were and what we did yesterday is continually coming out in consequences to-day. But the one grand seed-period of our being, the period of the oaks that build the ships, in which our fortunes are embarked for eternity, the period of all the commanding fixtures and features of character, is never repeated, and is ordinarily early in

life.

That early seed-period, as well as the germinating and growing period that follows, is imaginative, romantic, full of rich powers and tendencies. Nettles will grow to the size of a forest, if you sow those; rich fruits and magnificent trees will grow, if you plant those. Whatever you set out, starts on its career with energy. The germinating, springing power in our immortal nature is, in one sense, omnipotent; it will be exercised, if not for good, then for evil, and no created agency can restrain it. It works for eternity, and at a rate of intensity with which perhaps only an immortal nature could work. The roots of our earliest habits twine themselves all about our immortality, and the trunk of character, strengthened by such roots, is immoveable, and the branches spread themselves out, a mighty shade of foliage.

Whatever, during the period of susceptibility and growing power, is implanted, takes strong hold, and if it be evil, becomes so omnipotent, that God only can cut it away; and if good, it is quite as hard to be eradicated, when once firmly set; but if set by grace, it grows on, even against the tendencies of a depraved nature. So prodigiously, intensely energetic, is the impressible period and growing power of our being. While it lasts, almost anything can be done with it; but by-and-bye, the susceptible and growing power is past, at least as to new things,

because almost every principle of being has been in turn tried, and the soul has become fully engaged with what it has settled down upon, and the power of the being works portentously in the increase of that, but takes hold of nothing new.

Our blessed Lord took young men for his Apostles. He could make anything out of them then, and the wine of the new dispensation was to be put into new bottles. It was the suggestive period, the power period, in the foundation of character. In that period he kept them with himself. His teachings went down into their souls, and took the entire and exclusive possession, not merely by the law of grace, and of a Divine Inspiration, but by the laws of their own constitution, under so early and heavenly a development.

It depends upon what men meet with and entertain at such a period, whether they shall become apostles of good or evil in our fallen world. Ordinarily whatever comes first, in a seductive shape, is received with open heart, and gets possession. If it be good, it is an impregnable citadel, manned in the soul for God and duty. If it be evil, it is the strong man armed, and who shall cast it out?

"I learned more from his conversation," says Southey, speaking of a friend in early life," than any other man ever taught me, because the rain fell when the young plant was just germinating, and wanted it most." At such a time, whatever falls in the shape of rain, the young plant drinks it in, as do the thirsty ridges. If the rain were mingled with a metallic poison, it would not be absorbed less eagerly, but disastrous would be the results.

When we speak of the suggestive period, we mean not the period in which the mind itself makes, puts forth, or proposes