The origin of Natura would perhaps require more time to trace than the benefit of the discovery would attone for: it shall therefore suffice to say, that his ancestors were neither of the highest rank: – that if no extraordinary action had signalized the names of any of them, so none of them had been guilty of crimes to entail infamy on their posterity: and that a moderate estate in the family had descended from father to son for many generations, without being either remarkably improved or embezzled – His immediate parents were in very easy circumstances, and he being their first son, was welcomed into the world with a joy usual on such occasions. – I never heard that any prodigies preceded or accompanied his nativity; or that the planets, or his mother's cravings during her pregnancy, had sealed him with any particular mark or badge of distinction: but have been well assured he was a fine boy, sucked heartily of his mother's milk, and what they call a thriving child. His weaning, I am told, was attended by some little ailments, occasioned by his pining aft er the food to which he had been accustomed; but proper means being found to make him lose the memory of the breast, he soon recovered his flesh, increased in strength, and could go about the room at a year and some few months old, without the help of a leading-string.

Hitherto the passions, those powerful abettors, I had almost said sole authors of all human actions, operated but faintly, and could shew themselves only in proportion to the vigour of the animal frame. Yet latent as they are, an observing eye may easily discover them in each of their diff erent propensities, even from the most early infancy.