n and victory, are surest
to awaken the enthusiasm of the extremists, who always direct the
admiring gaze of heir parasites to the favorite representatives of
their own party, their scorn to the favorite representatives of the
other party. But under such circumstances, by is much as the
moderation of impartiality and of a patient search for the exact
truth is hard to be kept, an unlikely to win popularity, it is the
more a duty, and the surer to bear good fruits of service to the
public. There is a fashionable habit of laughing or sneering at the
illusions of the young, a habit usually mistimed and injurious. For
an illusion is as real as a truth. Every phenomenon implies truth,
however incorrectly t may be understood. An illusion is, in fact, but
a reality misinterpreted. Harmless, joy-breeding illusions are the
magic coloring of our existence. They should be cultivated rather
than rudely driven away.

The dry critic who daily labors, and with success, to destroy them,
may be knowing; but he is not wise. Every seeming acquisition really
impoverishes him. The noble Mendelssohn once said, "Life without
illusions is only death." The illusions of high and guileless hearts
are the blessed hopes created by generous faiths fastening on the
better aspects of truth. They are to our experience what the
tremulous iridescence is to the neck of the dove. To allow, as we
grow old, a sinister gaze at the sterner aspects of truth to banish
these rich and kindly illusions, is a wretched folly, however much it
may dress itself as wisdom. There are lures and deceits, enchanting
at an early period, which, at a later one, ought to be outgrown, seen
through and left behind, but not with arid and scoffing conceit. The
way to escape sadness, when the light of one beautiful promise after
another goes out, is to kindle in place thereof the light of one
glorious reality after another. If the gathered experience we carry
at evening renders worthless many things we prized in the morning, it
should also give preciousness to many things unvalued then.

When the fallen torch of ambition has smouldered into blackness, we
ought to make the eternal star of religion our guide. To take
spiritual treasures away without replacing them by better ones is
robbery. The cynical authors who deal chiefly in ridicule and satire,
or in what they call solid facts, the alternate levity and bitterness
of whose writings tend to destroy all ingenuous faith and glowing