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tempt might have carried the sensations of the reader to that giddy height, to which they are elevated on the perusal of a romance; it might have rendered a circumstance of surprise more surprising, or a subject of admiration more admirable, than it really was: but it would have thwarted the more rational design, of furnishing remarkable and well authenticated facts, to prove, from individual instances of early talent, the natural strength and lofty destinies of the human mind. Is it in philosophy or common sense to imagine, that superior powers are kindled in a mortal frame, only to blaze as the meteor of a moment here, and then to be quenched in everlasting night? If nothing is made in vain, the bud of genius and virtue, when scorched by untimely blasts, must open again in some more genial climate. All the skill of artificial temperature will scarcely keep alive the rare and delicate productions of the tropics, in these our northern latitudes: but we do not thence infer, that this debility is constitu-
