I.] ANTECEDENTS. 15
duction because his family likeness proclaimed him to be the son of an old friend. The Englishman did not conceal his difficulties, and the
stranger actually lent him the sum he needed on the guarantee of his family likeness, confirmed, no doubt, by some conversation. In this
and similar instances how small has been the influence of nurture ; the child had developed into manhood, along a predestined course laid out in his nature. It would be impossible to find a converse instance in which two persons, unlike at their birth, had been moulded by similarity of nurture into so close a resemblance that their nearest relations failed to distinguish them. Let us quote Shakespeare again as an illustration ; in " A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 2), Helena and Hermia, who had been inseparable in childhood and girlhood, and had identical nurture
" So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet a union in partition,"
were physically quite unlike : the one was short and dark, the other tall and fair ; therefore, the