Page:Father's memoirs of his child.djvu/67

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of its futility, their detail will not be without its use, in enforcing general argument on the one hand, or quieting individual anxiety on the other. The just distinction, on the whole, seems to be sufficiently obvious. Where severe labour is exerted, to produce by artificial culture an early and abundant harvest, in a soil of moderate fertility, the avarice of the husbandman is not more pernicious to the glebe which he ransacks and exhausts, than the effect of such a discipline to the human frame: on the contrary, when the strength of the natural genius is not miscalculated, but its energy discreetly managed, and directed to its proper objects, the experiment will be found equally safe and satisfactory; the project in this case is not to be considered as visionary, but as entitled to anticipate a degree of success, commensurate with the honourable nature of the ambition.

Thomas Williams Malkin was born on the thirtieth of October, 1795. It is not intended to run a parallel of his infancy, with that of Addison in his assumed cha-