For how frequent are the cases in which the happiest of
temperaments are perverted by the necessities of toil, so burdensome to
tender years, or in which corroding anxieties, weighing upon parents'
hearts, check the free play of domestic love!--and in all cases where
such limitations are present, even in the gentlest form, there must be a
cramping up of the human organization and individuality somewhere; and
everywhere, and under all circumstances, there must be sensibly felt the
absence of that leisure which crowns and glorifies the affections of
home, making them seem the most like summer sunshine, or rather like a
sunshine which knows no season, which is an eternal presence in the
soul.
As regards all these three elements, De Quincey's childhood was
prosperous; afterwards, vicissitudes came,--mighty changes capable of
affecting all other transmutations, but thoroughly impotent to annul the
inwrought grace of a pre-established beauty. On the other hand, Byron's
childhood was, in all these elements, unfortunate.
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