The analysis of a face into its ancestral elements requires that it should be examined in the very earliest infancy, before it has lost that ancient and solemn look it brings with it out of the past eternity; and again in that brief space when Life, the mighty sculptor, has done his work, and Death, his silent servant, lifts the veil and lets us look at the marble lines he has wrought so faithfully; and lastly, while a painter who can seize all the traits of a countenance is building it up, feature after feature, from the slight outline to the finished portrait.
-- I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we learn to look upon our bodies more and more as a temporary possession and less and less as identified with ourselves.

In early years, while the child "feels its life in every limb," it lives in the body and for the body to a very great extent.

It ought to be so.

There have been many very interesting children who have shown a wonderful indifference to the things of earth and an extraordinary development of the spiritual nature.

There is a perfect literature of their biographies, all alike in their essentials; the same "disinclination to the usual amusements of childhood "; the same remarkable sensibility; the same docility; the same conscientiousness; in short, an almost uniform character, marked by beautiful traits, which we look at with a painful admiration.