He moulds, he renders
symmetrical, the physical, the intellectual, the moral man. Nature
sometimes does this herself, as though she would occasionally furnish a
model man for our imitation, as she has given lines, and forms, and
colors, which all artists of all ages shall copy, but cannot equal. But,
do the best we can, education is more or less artificial; and hence the
child of the school will suffer by comparison with the child of nature,
when she presents him in her best forms.
In a summer ramble I met a man so dignified as to attract the notice and
command the respect of all who knew him. I was with him upon the lakes
and mountains several days and nights, and never for a moment did the
manliness of his character desert him. I have seen no other person who
could boast such physical beauty. Accustomed to a hunter's life;
carrying often a pack of thirty or forty or fifty pounds; sleeping upon
the ground or a bed of boughs; able, if necessity of interest demanded,
to travel in the woods the ordinary distance which a good horse would
pass over upon our roads; with every organ of the arm, the leg, the
trunk, fully expressed; with a manly, kind, intelligent countenance, a
beard uncut, in the vigor of early manhood, he seemed a model which the
statuaries of Greece and Rome desired to see, but did not. He had at
once the bearing of a soldier and the characteristics of a gentleman.
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