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His brain was too active and prolific to be confined to the details of military service; he entered into a discussion of all those great questions which formed the early constitutional history of the United States, all the more remarkable because he was so young. In fact he never was a boy; he was a man before he was seventeen. His ability was surpassed only by his precocity.
When he will smoke depends upon the precocity of his individual generation; and that increases in a direct ratio with time itself, in this country.
He had, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for some great work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which, joined to his mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his youthful companions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny.
But now the idea came strongly into Hester's mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could be made a friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the parent or the child.
Clara, born in 1820, had been her father's pupil from her tenderest childhood, but the development of her musical gifts was not forced in such a way as to interfere with her health and the exuberance of her spirits. The exacting teacher was also a tender father and a man of ripe judgment, and he knew the bitter price which mere mental precocity so frequently has to pay for its existence.
He learned his letters with all the sharp precocity which marks the Parisian street arab, and derived great amusement from the woodcuts illustrating the alphabet. He found opportunities, too, for plenty of fine fun in the little office, where the stove still remained the chief attraction and a source of endless enjoyment.
Nor had he won an extraordinary reputation until he was long past Hamilton's present age. Certainly he had never exhibited such unhuman precocity. But although Hamilton had, by this time, extancy to suffice any man, and was hunted to his very lair by society, he had no thought of resting on his labours. He by no means regarded himself as a demi-god, nor the country as able to take care of itself.
He would die before his son's triumph; but this did not sadden him, for the family would remain to enjoy the victory and to give thanks to God for His goodness. Humanities, theology, canons, everything, the young man mastered with an ease which surprised his masters, and they compared him to the Fathers of the Church, who had attracted attention by their precocity.
All this was not what he had imagined; he felt no desire to play the landowner's son at home in the way Lasse had in mind. "It'll be trouble enough here to manage about your daily bread," he said, with remarkable precocity. "Oh, it won't be so difficult to earn our daily bread, even if we can't hold a feast every day," said Lasse, affronted.
I do not read of great intellectual precocity, like that of Cicero and William Pitt, nor of great attainments, like those of Abélard and Thomas Aquinas, nor even an insight, like that of Bacon, into what constitutes the dignity of man and the true glory of civilization; but, like Ambrose and the first Leo, he was early selected for important missions and responsible trusts, all of which he discharged with great fidelity and ability.
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