for something better. This is a predominating feeling with them until nearly or quite middle age, when they are apt to become fully persuaded what calling in life they are best qualified for. We are not sure that it is any particular harm for a man to box the compass of occupations and experiences in his early years. If a rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling snow-ball gathers a good deal of snow; and how much more is moss worth than snow? The host of miscellaneous facts a man thus acquires, and the varied experience he undergoes, afford a broad and firm foundation to build a fine superstructure of character upon; and, so there be no wear and tear of moral principle in preparing the foundation, it does not matter much whether a man commence life,' as it is called, at twenty or thirty, or forty, even. Dr. Johnson commenced studying Greek when he was seventy; and if a man has leisure at that age, it is better, perhaps, for him to commence his education then, than to omit it altogether. The old adage, 'Jack at all trades and good at none,' never originated on this side of the Atlantic. The Americans have very conclusively shown, that a man can be Jack at all trades, and good at all. The fact is, 'a real live Yankee' (no better opportunity probably will offer for a little necessary national hyperbole,) will crowd more activity, energy, and enterprise into a new pursuit that he may enter upon; will do more to develop it, and draw out all the advantages to himself it is susceptible of yielding, in five years, than most old countrymen can in their life-time. For this reason, versatility, instead of rendering a man unfit for success at any thing, is more likely to make him successful at every thing he undertakes. An opinion prevails with many, that versatility and profundity cannot well be associated together. We very much doubt if Brougham would have been a more profound lawyer or statesman, if he had left literature, science, and almost every thing else alone. The great literary acquirements of Story, Legare, Choate, and others, did not prevent them from being profoundly versed in the law. Cæsar was none the worse general because he excelled as a statesman, a writer, and an orator. Alexander Hamilton and John Hancock were none the worse statesmen for being good accountants, and the former for being, beside, a good general. We are inclined to think, as a general thing, that versatility of talent is apt to be accompanied by unusual activity and industry. The versatile man thinks quicker and more intensely, has more mental life and energy, than the man whose thoughts are all concentrated upon the same objects, whose labors are all directed in the same channel. Elasticity of spirits and versatility of talent generally go hand in hand; and it seems a wise provision of nature that they should; for a man with a large endowment of the latter requires the aid of the former to sustain him, and carry him through the multiplicity of enterprises into which he is led. We deem these prefatory remarks necessary to a consideration of availability in some prominent men talked of as candidates for the presidency. Certain qualities in a man may be much more popular with one nation than with another, although there are qualities of the heart which win their way with the whole human family. Napoleon is said to have understood French nature to perfection; but his know ledge of human nature was less remarkable. His popularity with any other nation beside the French, probably would have been less unbounded; but such men as Cimon, the Grecian General, and Mark Antony, notwithstanding their great vices, would be popular among any people at any age of the world. Shakspeare has put into the mouth of Cæsar words which describe some of the heroic qualities of Mark Antony: 'ANTONY, Leave thy lascivious wassails! When thou once Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against, Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did deign The roughest berry on the rudest hedge: Yea, like a stag, when snow the pasture sheets, The barks of trees thou browsedst: on the Alps, It is reported, thou didst eat strange flesh, We presume, too, he made no ostentation about being obliged to eat what little he had, hastily. The four most prominent men talked of as candidates for the next presidency, beside the present incumbent of the presidential chair, we believe, are Everett, Seward, Houston, and Douglas. We propose to glance hastily at the life and character of each, regarding them more especially with a view to availability as candidates for the presidency. Edward Everett, the greatest living orator, the all-accomplished, ripe scholar, the experienced statesman, and the perfect gentleman, would confer great honor upon the presidential chair, if chosen to fill it. Nature dealt very liberally with Mr. Everett in the outset, and circumstances and his own exertions have done the rest. The son of a clergyman, he graduated from Harvard College at a very early age, with a reputation for extraordinary abilities. On leaving college, he first commenced the study of law, but soon turned his attention to theology; and on the death of Buckminster, the most celebrated preacher of the time, was called, at the early age of nineteen, to fill his place. Great as was the renown of his predecessor, the fame of the youthful Iverett soon almost eclipsed it. People flocked in great numbers to hear him, and his reputation for great eloquence spread far and wide. Fired by a noble ambition for excellence, he labored with such untiring energy and assiduity that he soon impaired his health, and was obliged to resign his ministry. He then went abroad, and spent several years travelling through Great Britain and Europe. On his return to the United States, he was made Greek Professor in Harvard College. Soon after this, the editorship of the North American Review fell into his hands, and that venerable quarterly was conducted by him for many years with marked ability. Its pages now glisten with more than fifty brilliant essays, on every variety of topic, that have been contributed to it by his fertile and inexhaustible pen. He was but little upward of thirty when he was chosen member of Congress, a post that he filled with great credit for about ten years. He was then chosen Governor of Massachusetts, and continued to fill that office until he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of London. This was an office that he was admirably calculated to reflect the highest honor upon; and the United States has never been more ably represented at that court, than in his person. On his return from England, he was chosen president of Harvard College, has since been Cabinet Minister, and is now United States Senator. What a rich and varied experience he has crowded into the period intervening between the ages of nineteen and sixty! More than all, he has occupied no position and filled no office that he did not confer as much honor upon as he received from them. No man in the United States, probably, has been brought in more immediate contact, through all his life, with the conservatism of the old world and the new, than Mr. Everett ; and notwithstanding his great wealth and very gentlemanly tastes, habits, and associations, we know of no production from any other distinguished man in the Union, breathing a more wholesome and pure democracy, than his address before the Colonization Society at Washington, a year or two ago. It contains, however, but the sentiments of his early years, again reiterated and enforced, after a larger experience and a more mature judgment. We make one short quotation from his early writings on 'Aristocracy': 'Ir requires a hundred years to raise human weakness to beatific purity; but the hundred years, if circumstances are favorable, will do it. What subsists to-day by violence, continues to-morrow by acquiescence, and is perpetuated by tradition; till at last the hoary abuse shakes the gray hairs of antiquity at us, and gives itself out as the wisdom of ages. Thus the clearest dictates of reason are made to yield to a long succession of follies. And this is the foundation of the aristocratic system at the present day. Its strong-hold with all those not immediately interested in it, is the reverence of antiquity.' In his manners, Mr. Everett is dignified and somewhat reserved, but bland and affable. He, however, lacks that hearty, careless, free-andeasy, good-natured manner, which has distinguished some of our great men, Jackson and Clay, for instance, and which 'tells' so much for availability in a candidate for the presidency. There is in some men a constitutional good-nature, a gayety and heartiness of manner, which no amount of education or experience of greatness can affect. One of this kind was Judge Story. It is said that the Earl of Carlisle, a man who, as the reader knows, has the blood of all the Howards running in his veins, when in this country, called one day at his house in Cambridge, and found him with a large party of young children, his fine, benevolent countenance radiant with perspiration and delight, all sliding down the bannister on the stairs. A fourth-rate lawyer, whose dignity was his principal capital, (not regarding the impossibility of his being so engaged,) would have felt extreme mortification at being found on such an occasion in such undignified employment. We doubt if Mr. Everett has ever been found by any of the Howards, or the Smiths even, sliding down stair-bannisters since early boyhood, but no one, we presume, would be surprised to find Seward or Houston so engaged, and it is not impossible that the Little Giant' might sometimes perform the same feat, when in one of his most genial moods. It is not so much qualities of the head as of the heart, in great men, that wins the admiration of the multitude. It was not the mental powers of Cæsar (formidable as they were) that Cato so much dreaded; it was his generosity, his magnanimity, and wide-spread sympathy with his fellow-men. Curse on his virtues; they have undone his country!' There was no resisting the popularity of that good-for-nothing, unprincipled demagogue and debauchee, John Wilkes. His genial wit and humor, and strong social feelings, broke through all the barricades of fashion and etiquette, and assured the coal-heaver and the chimneysweep that no thickness of coal-dust and soot could divide the bond of fellow-feeling that united them. There is nothing in the multitudinous pages of Bozzy's life of his idol, so laughter-provoking to us, as the dinner-scene where Wilkes brought all his conciliatory arts to bear upon his gruff and stubborn old enemy, Dr. Johnson; and the perfect success he met with shows clearly how much good-natured wit and humor, as well as tact, and knowledge of human nature, he possessed. Nature and circumstances have done much in the way of availability as a candidate for the presidency, for Samuel Houston. The probationary state he went through to attain his present exemplary character as a statesman and a citizen was a trying one. He has been doubly proved and refined in the crucible of experience. His early life was dissolute and abandoned in the extreme. After he became Governor of Texas even, there was a shamelessness in his intemperance, and an indiscreet disregard for the proprieties of life, which have seldom been equalled by any public man of so prominent a standing in the country. His conduct of course exposed him to the severest animadversions, and no other public man probably has met with more determined opposition, or encountered fiercer attacks and more bitter sarcasms and invective in his public career, than he. After passing through this ordeal, he comes out a moral reformer and a polished gentleman. The most fastidious and exacting, we believe, can now find no fault with his private character. His lectures upon temperance are said to be impressive and effective in an extraordinary degree, and the great and beneficial influence he exerts in favor of that cause cannot be easily overrated. Gen. Houston is one of the handsomest men in the Senate, (not quite so good-looking as Everett, however.) His figure is tall and commanding, and he is exceedingly dignified and graceful in deportment. He never loses his temper, but is always calm, cheerful, and courteous. Taunts and inuendoes from Foote, such as unhinged the senatorial dignity of Benton, Gen. Houston used to reply to with a bland serenity of manner, and a good-natured facetiousness which covered the mischievous Foote with ridicule. The struggles of his eventful life have contributed much, undoubtedly, to give him a command of temper, and an indifference to trifles, not easily shaken. The excesses and profligacy of his early life, when contrasted with the irreproachable conduct of his later years, will have the effect to increase his availability as a candidate for the presidency. Very few men, we presume, reach middle age without having more or less youthful indiscretions to be sorry for. If a man who has been guilty of very great ones is elevated to high places in spite of them, others feel that they receive their pardon from the world for theirs, at the same time he receives his. On the contrary, if a man finds himself incapacitated for high office in consequence of previous shortcomings in rectitude and morals, others feel that the world extends the same rebuke to them for similar delinquencies. There is, too, a certain admiration in the masses for a man whose passions are so strong as sometimes to lead him to break through wholesome restraints, and commit errors of which he afterward repents. It is deemed an indication of a head-strong and impulsive spirit, more frank and generous than prudent and circumspect. They look for nothing heroic in the man whose prudence and discretion never forsake him. The ungovernable bursts of passion and fierce oaths which sometimes came from 'Old Hickory' were no draw-back upon his popularity; and the suggestion of Gen. Taylor to Capt. Bragg, that he should make the Mexicans a donation of something exactly the opposite of Paradise, (although the story is said to be wholly untrue,) we are inclined to think procured him more votes than a hundred politicians could have influenced by expatiating on the soundness of his political views. There is a host of salient angles in the character and career of Gen. Houston, to hang popularity upon; and on the whole we are inclined to think that he is chock-full of availability as a candidate for the presidency. We will next examine a little into the qualities for availability that the 'Little Giant' possesses. We make Seward wait until the last, because we know he will do it with so much polite patience, blandness, and good-nature. Seward feels so well assured of his position, and is such a perfect gentleman, that he would never think of feeling impatient and irritable under either real or imaginary neglects and slights. We do not possess many facts in regard to the history of Senator Douglas. He is said, however, not to be a very highly-cultivated man, but to be an original genius.' It is a much-mooted question, whether a regular education tends to cramp the intellect, and to depress originality, or not. Those who advocate the affirmative side of it, we suspect, are in a minority, if not in numbers, at least in talents and acquirements. As respectable and conservative an authority as any we know of among this supposed minority, is Lord Jeffrey. In a review of the works of Franklin, as is well known, he took the ground that a regular education is unfavorable to vigor or originality of understanding; and he defended his position with all that acuteness of discrimination, and keenness and force of logic,. for which he was so distinguished. Examples can be produced to support almost any theory, but no more striking ones can be afforded in favor of the affirmative of the question, than Benjamin Franklin,. Alexander Hamilton, and John Marshall. We are of that number,. however, who do not believe that a regular and highly-finished education. is any draw-back to originality of genius. We believe, with Lowell. that 'AFTER polishing granite as much as you will, |