for a numerous offspring, to be capable of indulging minute attentions to any particular infant; and some are altogether unconscious, or regardless, of the presence of genius, amidst the clearest manifestations of it’s existence.  To most other persons, but the parents, if we except a good old grandmother, or an artful or affectionate nurse, the actions and the sayings of a child seldom afford much interest; and the relation of them often gives rise to no inconsiderable degree of animosity.  The parents of other children, and even the other children of the same parents, not unfrequently hear such praises with distaste and aversion; and, if they do not soon entirely forget them, it is, perhaps, only because their unextinguishable envy condemns them to preserve the remembrance of the circumstance by which it was originally excited.

These, among various other causes, prevent our always becoming acquainted with the early occurrences which distinguish genius, even where they soonest appear:  but, genius is not always apparent in early infancy; and, where it is, every hero does not, like Hercules, find a serpent successfully to encounter in his cradle.

Of Lord Nelson’s infancy, from whatever causes, scarcely any anecdote is now preserved.  That which may, probably, be considered as the first, has often been related; but never, heretofore, in a manner sufficiently accurate and circumstantial.

At the very early age of not more than five or six years, little Horatio, being on a visit to his grandmother, at Hilborough, who was remarkably fond of all her son’s children, and herself a most exemplary character, had strolled out, with a boy some years older than himself, to ramble over the country in search of birds-nests.  Dinner-time, however, arriving, and her grandson not having returned, the old lady became so excessively alarmed, that messengers, both on horseback and on foot, were immediately dispatched, to discover the wanderer.  The progress of the young adventurers had, it seems, been impeded by a brook, or piece of water, over which Horatio could not pass; and, his companion having gone off and left him, he was found ruminating, very composedly, on the opposite bank.  It is not ascertained, whether his companion had got across the water, or gone back again by the way they had approached it:  whether the young hero was meditating how it might be passed; or too weary, or unwilling, to retread all his former steps.  Who shall pretend to say, that this child, thus sitting, in a state of abstraction, by the side of an impassable piece of water, might not first feel that ardent thirst of nautical knowledge excited, the gratification of which has since led to such glorious consequences!  Be this as it may—­for even himself, if living, might not now be conscious of the fact—­it is perfectly well remembered that, on his being brought into the presence of his grandmother, the old lady concluded her lecture respecting the propriety of children’s rambling abroad without the permission of their friends, by saying—­“I wonder, that fear did not drive you home.”—­“Fear, grandmama,” innocently replied the child, “I never saw fear; what is it?”