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first by the refusal of his brother's toys, and then when Freddy is carried off by a somewhat ostentatious permission to play with them, lays bare the whole principle of contradiction without a pause to take breath: "I don't want it, now Freddy is gone, and I shall want it when he comes back again; and Freddy shall have it when he is naughty, and he shan't have it when he is good; and when he wants it he shan't have it, and when he doesn't want it he shall have it." Where there is no easy natural check, such a tantrum might set a formal long-worded machinery of admonition at work, or, if left to itself, possibly issue in a temper really formidable. The child, among a crowd of equals, finds his level, learns to give and take, subdued to reason and forbearance by the friendly force and pressure of circumstances. Admonition in its place is excellent, but the most telling teaching of all is that which the child acquires for himself from the favouring influences about him, and this teaching is most effectual is, we may say, the prerogative of middle station.

into it; and Childhood shortened does not imply youth prolonged. The pace of life is too quick for even the feeling of youth to remain in undisturbed quiet possession. The young man has no pleas dres to wait for. The only possibility of man forgetting the flight of time is to have something to do more engrossing than what is called pleasure. Business

work of some kind — is absolutely necessary to sustain the feeling of youth; for work keeps up the idea of learning and incompleteness. The distinctions of youth, what it excels in, are not accomplishments that improve; the only hope and endeavour is to maintain them at their present level. The beauty of a season or two has too many observers counting them up not to be aware of the pas sage of time; it becomes a haunting idea when it interferes so conspicuously with the prestige and hopes of life. There is a trepidation, a watching for signs when the first exultant pride of beauty in its freshness is over. Georges Sand makes one of her heroines scream at the first faint suspicion of a wrinkle. And while its glory lasts there is naturally an eager craving for its appreciation, a conscious sense of a prize to be caught ere it passes which disturbs that poetic idea of careless, gay, dazzling youth so dear to the fancy. The celebrated Lady Townsend

But if childhood finds its most congenial home in middle station, it may be granted that Youth shows in greatest splendour when set off by rank and wealth and fashion. It is the period — the one age-which may be said to need room, a broad, well-lighted theatre, for fortunate in another string to her bow its more brilliant display. If people could - wit succeeding to beauty. expressed be always young and sustain unchecked herself anxious to see George the Third's their powers of receiving and imparting coronation, as she had never seen one. pleasurable excitement, they would choose "Why, Madam, you walked at the last." well (for this world at least) in choosing" Yes, child," was her answer, "but I saw to be lords and ladies. Society is a the- nothing of it; I only looked to see who atre planned for their interest and to looked at me." show them to the highest advantage. The heir of fame and name and fortune, every grace of person and manner sedulously cultivated, all the world indulgent, deferential, solicitous to admire, has only to be willing to please to out-top all rivals; and if the heir — what of the heiress? all art, all fancy, is inspired by highborn beauty in its early prime of imperial loveliness. Earth has not anything to show more fair to the painter or the poet than the brilliant glorified youth of the great; - of youth and maiden, trained in the school of gracious manners, in all the traditions of sentiment and home of a cultivated, far-descended aristocracy; with broad manors and marble halls in ample conformity to their high deserts. But the pity is that this reign is shortThe vista to this golden glory is too brilliant not to tempt to undue hurry

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And there is a premature prudence engendered by this exaggerated sense of the Heetingness of youth as well as a self-absorbed vanity in conscious possession. Nature makes the blossoming season short; but, precipitating, hastening on the time of bloom, makes it shorter still. The girl ceases to feel a girl in high rank much sooner than in a middle condition; high and low alike, through different causes, entering early upon the dry experience of life. It is those who rank neither with rich nor poor, who have to recognize waiting as a condition of youth, and to be patient under it, who, by the holding out of expectation, feel young the longest. Society by no means arranges itself for the especial convenience of the youth of the middle classes. They have to bide their time and to live upon hope. Horace Walpole commends to his friend

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then the Duchess of Grafton sends for me to loo in Upper Grosvenor Street; before I can get thither I am begged to step to Kensington to give Mrs. Anne Pitt my opinion about a bow window; after that I am to walk with Miss Pelham in the terrace till two in the morning, because it is moonlight and her chair is not come. All this does not help my morning laziness, and by the time I have breakfasted, fed my birds and my squirrels, and dressed, there is an auction ready;

the good sense of his niece Charlotte'on | as the only one in which he can hope to occasion of her receiving proposals from be acceptable, and yet which he feels Lord Dysart, whom she did not know by slipping out of, with a banter which is sight, and who wanted to marry her with- only yearning in disguise. My resoluin a week. She said to her sister Walde- tions for growing old and staid are admiragrave "very sensibly," "If I was but ble. I wake with a sober plan and intend nineteen I would refuse him point blank. to pass the day with my friends, then I do not like to be married in a week to comes the Duke of Richmond and hura man I never saw. But I am two-and-ries me down to Whitehall to dinner; twenty; some peopie say I am handsome, some say I am not; I believe the truth is I am likely to be large and to go off soon -it is dangerous to refuse so great a match." "She came and saw this imperious lover, and I believe was glad she had not refused him point blank, for they were married last Thursday- that is, in a week." It is not nature here that makes youth short-lived; a girl unhackneyed is still a girl at twenty-two, fresh, full of hope and expectation, with her life before her, no airs of stale worldly wisdom taint-in ing the sense of spring and hope. It is not nature that hurries life out of its spring; it is the work of men and women, a plot against reason which possesses a frivolous society from first to last, making youth everything till all the rest of life is mourned over as a falling-off, a weary task, the day after the fair. Youth catches the tone, shortening its own span, chattering about broken illusions, and asking

Ah, what shall I be at fifty,

Should nature keep me alive, If I find the world so bitter,

When I am but twenty-five?

short, Madam, this was my life last week, and is, I think, every week, with the addition of forty episodes; so pray forgive me; I really will begin to be between forty and fifty by the time I am fourscore." The age between forty and fifty is a capital working age, but when more than half these years have been spent in precisely the same round, the pleasure may well be dashed with forebodings, for it is a late age to take to bemg serious. What his real feelings are we learn from a letter to his friend George Montagu written two days later. "The less one is disposed, if one has any sense, to talk of one's self to people that inquire only out of compliment, the more Horace Walpole in his own person is satisfaction one feels in indulging a selfa representative example of this tone, as complacency, by sighing to those that his early life is an example of the brilliant really sympathize with our griefs. Do spring which belongs to youth among the not think it is pain that makes me give high-born who are fitted by manner, wit, this low-spirited air to my letter. No, it and wealth to illustrate and enjoy it. Age is the prospect of what is to come, and is his bête noire; he cannot forget it; the sensation of what is passing that whether he jests or is serious we see it a affects me. The loss of youth is melanprevailing dread. He adores the young, choly enough, but to enter into old age they constitute the charm of society, yet through the gate of infirmity, most dishe hopes for no tenderness or sympathy heartening." He suffered, it will be refrom them, and is afraid of their contempt. membered, from gout. "I have not the He worships the memory of his own conscience to trouble young people when youth, its sparkling wit and social suc- I can no longer be juvenile as they are, cesses; he recognizes no gains from and I am tired of the world, its politics, thought and experience, no compensa- its pursuits, and its pleasures, but it will tions, and describes life about him or before him as only a repetition of old joys from which the spirit has fled, but which he yet prefers to all maturity of thought or graver interests can offer. In society of ladies, addressing them in graceful persiflage, the thought is still uppermost. To Lady Hervey he describes the old life VOL. III. 148

LIVING AGE.

cost me some struggles before I submit to be tender and careful. Christ! Can I ever stoop to the regimen of old age? I do not wish to dress up a withered person, nor drag it about to public places, but to sit in one's room clothed warmly, expecting visits from folks I don't wish to see, and tendered and flattered by rela

the neighbouring villages, to see the princess and the show, the moon hining very bright, I could not help laughing as I surveyed our troop, which, instead of tripping lightly to such an Arcadian entertainment, were hobbling down by the balustrades, wrapped up in cloaks and greatcoats for fear of catching cold. The earl, you know, is bent double, the countess very lame; I am a miserable walker, and the princess, though as strong as the Brunswick lion, makes no figure in going down fifty stone stairs. Except Lady Anne, and by courtesy Lady Mary, we were none of us young enough for a pastoral. These jaunts are too juvenile. I am ashamed to look back and remember in what year of Methuselah I was here first." It is a very formidable penalty of rank and greatness never to be allowed to sink into personal insignificance. Quite apart from vanity must come the longing, when crowds come to see, to be something worth seeing. It is enough to account for the misanthropy of some royal fops and belles, when selfflattery can no longer give the lie to the mirror's home truths.

tions impatient for one's death. Let the gout do its worst. . . . Nobody can have truly enjoyed the advantages of youth, health, and spirits, who is content to exist without the two last, which alone bear any resemblance to the first." It is the success, prominence, and brilliancy of his youth that is answerable for this tone. The busy worker has a succession of springs. Walpole can only look back. "Unlike most people that are growing old, I am convinced that nothing is charming but what appeared important to one's youth, which afterwards passes for follies. Oh! but those follies were sincere; if the pursuits of age are so they are sincere alone to self-interest. This I think, and have no other care than not to think aloud. I would not have respectable youth think me an old fool." And the gloom increases as years advance. At sixty-six he describes himself as a ruin. "Dulness in the form of indolence grows upon me. I am inactive, lifeless, so indifferent to most things that I neither inquire after nor remember any topics that might enliven my letters. It would be folly in me to concern myself about new generations. How little a way can I see of their progress." And yet he lived fourteen years after this, feeling older and older, though in the full possession of his faculties and even of his style. Can any one suppose that under different Industry, in whatever rank, keeps off circumstances, under the stimulus of the sense and dread of age. It is perwholesome, because necessary occupa- haps some decay of brain power in the tion, no careless, insolent triumph of indolent or idle which suggests it. The youth to look back to, no peerage reveal- great leaders of parties know better than ing how long that youth was past, no to put such ideas into other people's consciousness of being an object of curi-heads; but also they have no leisure for osity or observation when no longer speculation upon the mere progress of worth looking at, Horace Walpole time. They accept work as the proper would not have been a younger man at necessity of middle life, and the period forty-seven and sixty-seven respectively, than these revelations show him?

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Youth, which is graceful in its golden prime, too often develops or collapses into awkward unsightly proportions. Sensitiveness as well as vanity suffers under the contrast. Who would not rather be one of the crowd of lookers-on than the observed of all observers on the occasion of the visit to Stowe he celebrates, where he was invited to meet the Princess Amelia, and an al fresco entertainment was arranged in the stately gardens and lamp-lit grotto? "The evening being, as will happen, more than cool, and the destined spot anything but dry, as our procession descended the vast flight of steps into the garden, in which was assembled a crowd of people from Buckingham and

Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen?
For only once, in the village street
Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face,
A grey old wolf, and a lean.

of middle life lasts long where the faculties are all kept employed, and are found equal to the demands on them. The busy man, whether statesman or shopkeeper has his mind, thoughts, plans all fixed on the future. He looks forward, which is the habit of youth, and thus keeps up the sensation when the fact is long past. But where the prizes of life come with youth without pains or care, comparatively few recognize the charm of work. It looks like duty only, if indeed it is that, to people who have already what most men work for. It is only the middle and lower classes who are driven to it on pain of want or loss of self-respect; and perhaps it is in the middle class especially that it acts as an 'elixir. The poor age and fade under

their toil, and can't help feeling, and say-bright soul go through the fire and water of ing that they do, when strength and the world's temptations, and seductions, and agility fail them, and back and limbs ache corruptions, and transformations, and alas for under burdens that once were easy. the insufficiency of nature! alas for its powerVigour of mind outlives vigour of limbs.lessness to persevere, its waywardness in disThe lawyer and keen man of business are has become age, and not more different is the appointing its own promise! Wait till youth not reminded from within by the loss of miniature we have of him when a boy, when power that the descent of the hill has every feature spoke of hope, put side by side begun, till long after the cottager and with the large portrait painted to his honour his wife look and call themselves old when he is old, when his limbs are shrunk, his man and woman. Of course there are eye dim, his brow furrowed, and his hair grey, dangers in this unconsciousness. Men than differs the moral grace of that boyhood should always bear in mind that they are from the forbidding and repulsive aspect of mortal, but the fret and moan of dissatis- his soul, now that he has lived to the age of faction, the murmur that youth is gone, selfishness, is the ordinary winter of that For moroseness, and misanthropy, and leaving nothing else worth living for, is spring. no better preparation for death than the loins girded and the lamps burning; than strenous activity, even in temporal duties. If the poet, conscious that his leaf is sere, as he bids "fall, rosy garland, from my head," can look forward

Yet will I temperately rejoice;

--

man.

Exposed to the test by which age is tested, surely all these excellencies of youth which issue in so dreary a winter will prove not only transient but illusory:

If our

-seeming and no more. Youth is the cunningest of all disguises, — looking back, we see the faults of the man to so may the middle life of the great middle have been there all the while; the noble class, so long as the world keeps it busy. aspiration and generosity, judged by this It is not the poetical view of youth that key, vain self-confidence; the elastic we are combating, but the cynical view of cheerfulness, mere animal spirits; just all the rest of life, which with so many is as the misanthropy of later years resolves either an affectation or a needless gloom. itself into bile. Man is so complex a Experience rarely fits in with the ideal being presents so may sides and aswe scarcely think it does with the follow-pects, that a hundred dissimilar portraits ing tender monody which we find in Dr. may all be living likenesses. Newman's sermon entitled the Second memory responds to this picture with Spring; but unquestionably youth under some gracious answering image, it canits more charming aspect is the most not deny or refuse its tribute in illustralovely spectacle granted to mortal eyes, tion of a directly opposite one. There is and as such should be pictured and sung. no selfishness so blind, remorseless, and How beautiful is the human heart when it merely animal as youthful selfishness in puts forth its first leaves, and opens and re- some terrible instances. The preaching joices in its spring-tide. Fair as may be the of consequences does sometimes tell upon bodily form, fairer far, in its green foliage and such natures; they are more tolerable at bright blossoms, is natural virtue. It blooms fifty. Some touch of sympathy awakes in the young, like some rich flower, so delicate, in them. Experience humanizes them. so fragrant, and so dazzling, generosity, light-Wisdom and experience," says Swift, ness of heart and amiableness, the confiding "which are divine qualities, are the propspirit, the gentle temper, the elastic cheerful-erties of age, and youth in the want of ness, the open hand, the pure affection, the them is contemptible. But I do not say noble aspiration, the heroic resolve, the romantic pursuit, the love in which self has no this to mortify or discourage young men. -are not these beautiful? and are they I would not by any means have them not dressed up and set forth for admiration in despise themselves, for that is the ready their best shapes, in tales and in poems? and way to be despised by others, and the ah! what a prospect of good is there! Who consequences of contempt are fatal. For could believe that it is to fade; and yet as my part I take self-conceit and opinionnight follows upon day, as decrepitude follows ativeness," which he assumes to be the upon health, so surely are failure, and over-leading characteristic of young men, and throw, and annihilation, the issue of this their stock-in-trade, "to be of all others natural virtue, if time only be allowed to it to the most useful and profitable qualities run its course. There are those who are cut of the mind. It has to my knowledge off in the first opening of this excellence, and then if we may trust their epitaphs, they have made bishops and judges and smart lived like angels; but wait awhile, let them writers, and pretty fellows and pleasant live on, let the course of life proceed, let the companions and good preachers." The

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truth is that youth admits of as many in- of the days and nights of my life spent terpretations as there are interpreters. with the greatest content, and that which I The genius and temper of the observer can but hope to repeat again a few times in give it its colour, and that temper, in all my whole life." And a day or two after, but the satirist, is indulgent. We are counting up the cost, "This day my satisfied with youth if it only enjoys it- wife made it appear to me that my late self and frankly takes the good the gods entertainment this week cost me above provide, without reflecting that the boy £12, an expense which I am almost is more often father to the man than his ashamed of; though it is but once in a opposite: only his errors have a way of great while, and is the end for which, in seeming transient; things don't look the the most part, we live, to have such a same. What a different impression would merry day once or twice in a man's life." Froissart's picture of himself make if he Worldliness is assumed to be the one was describing the tastes of his maturity; vice needing time for its development. yet the same easy joyous selfishness Youth, conventionally speaking, is genshows in boy and man. "Well I loved erous; middle age calculating and worldto see dances and carollings, well to hear ly. How often experience antedates the minstrelsy and tales of glee, well to at- exhibition of this quality, each observer of tach myself to those who loved hounds life must determine for himself. Some and hawks, well to toy with my fair com- whose business has been the study and panions at school, and methought I had delineation of human nature, affirm with the art well to win their grace. My ears confidence that selfishness shows itself quickened at the sound of uncorking the equally betimes with the darker plaguewine flask, for I took great pleasure in spots of humanity. Lord Lytton has lately drinking and in fair array, and in delicate set men speculating on the age of murand fresh cates. I love to see (as is derers. Murderers, he says, are generally reason) the early violets and the white young men, and for the reason that it and red roses, and also chambers fairly belongs to youth to begin the habit of lighted; justs, dances, and late vigils, miscalculating its own power in relation and fair beds for refreshment; and for my better repose a night draught of claret or Rochelle wine mingled with spice." Youth, which everything becomes, can be poetically selfish, which cannot be managed in later years when reason and calculation come in. Pepys had exactly the same tastes as Froissart. But, instead of obeying his instincts without question, he explains matters to himself. "The truth is," he writes at thirtythree, when conscious that youth was taking wing, "I do indulge myself a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age of my life to do it; and out of my observation that most men that do thrive in the world do forget to take pleasure during the time that they are getting their estate, but reserve that till they have got one, then it is too late for them to enjoy it." But though more calculating he is less selfish as he gets older. The especial virtue of middle life-hospitality, redeems his indulgences from being mere personal gratification. Instead of feasting at other people's expense he entertains at his own. He describes an entertainment to his friends, beginning with dinner at noon, dancing jigs and country dances till two o'clock in the morning, finally lodging all his guests for the night, "and so broke up with extraordinary pleasure, as being one

to the society in which you live. We learn from the newspapers that the fellows who murder their sweethearts are from two to six-and-twenty; and persons who murder from other motives than love, that is, from revenge, avarice, or ambition, are generally about twenty-eight. Twenty-eight is the usual close of the active season for getting rid of one's fellow-creatures. No man, he tell us, ever commits "a first crime of a violent nature, such as murder, after thirty." It is something for the middle-aged man to feel himself out of the range of the more violent excesses; but in fact as men mostly feel young long after they cease to be so, the immunity is not realized.

We say that most men feel younger than they are, and this is perhaps because most men have not fulfilled in any degree their vague expectations for themselves, because they have as yet no sense of performance. Their shyness and reserve keep up a feeling of youth, while the faculty of effective, vehement expression, of compelling notice, or a hearing, makes people feel old. We have already said that premature distinction, any circumstances disorganizing life's machinery, a rush into publicity from whatever cause, separates from childhood, and induces a sense of youth long left behind. The author, whose first book, written in

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