But, in this Cervantic pleasantry of self-reprehension, the imperial philosopher has not failed to show this light and corrupt people that the reason he could not possibly resemble them, existed in the unhappy circumstance of having been subject to too strict an education under a family tutor, who had never suffered him to swerve from the one right way, and who (additional misfortune!) had inspired him with such a silly reverence for Plato and Socrates, Aristotle and Theophrastus, that he had been induced to make them his models.

"Whatever manners," says the emperor, "I may have previously contracted, whether gentle or boorish, it is impossible for me now to alter or unlearn.

Habit is said to be a second nature; to oppose it is irksome, but to counteract _the study of more than thirty years_ is extremely difficult, especially when it has been imbibed with so much attention." And what if men of genius, relinquishing their habits, could do this violence to their nature, should we not lose the original for a factitious genius, and spoil one race without improving the other?
If nature and habit, that second nature which prevails even over the first, have created two beings distinctly different, what mode of existence shall ever assimilate them?
Antipathies and sympathies, those still occult causes, however concealed, will break forth at an unguarded moment.

Clip the wings of an eagle that he may roost among domestic fowls,--at some unforeseen moment his pinions will overshadow and terrify his tiny associates, for "the feathered king" will be still musing on the rock and the cloud.
The man of genius will be restive even in his trammelled paces.

Too impatient amidst the heartless courtesies of society, and little practised in the minuter attentions, he has rarely sacrificed to the unlaughing graces of Lord Chesterfield.