He comes of the Brahmin caste of New England.

This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy referred to, and which many readers will at once acknowledge.

There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary.

Their names are always on some college catalogue or other.
They break out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up after they seem to have died out.

At last some newer name takes their place, it maybe,--but you inquire a little and you find it is the blood of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys or some of the old historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of a female descendant.
There probably is not an experienced instructor anywhere in our Northern States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general distinction.