n place in him a lapse
of which he is conscious; if he foresee open or secret attacks, which he
has had intimations that he will neither be strong enough to resist, nor
watchful enough to elude, let him not hastily ascribe this weakness,
this deficiency, and the painful apprehensions accompanying them, in any
degree to the virtues or noble qualities with which youth by nature is
furnished; but let him first be assured, before he looks about for the
means of attaining the insight, the discriminating powers, and the
confirmed wisdom of manhood, that his soul has more to demand of the
appropriate excellencies of youth, than youth has yet supplied to it;
that the evil under which he labours is not a superabundance of the
instincts and the animating spirit of that age, but a falling short, or
a failure. But what can he gain from this admonition? He cannot recall
past time; he cannot begin his journey afresh; he cannot untwist the
links by which, in no undelightful harmony, images and sentiments are
wedded in his mind. Granted that the sacred light of childhood is and
must be for him no more than a remembrance. He may, notwithstanding, be
remanded to nature, and with trustworthy hopes, founded less upon his
sentient than upon his intellectual being; to nature, as leading on
insensibly to the society of reason, but to reason and will, as leading
back to the wisdom of nature. A re-union, in this order accomplished,
will bring reformation and timely support; and the two powers of reason
and nature, thus reciprocally teacher and taught, may advance together
in a track to which there is no limit.

We have been discoursing (by implication at least) of infancy,
childhood, boyhood, and youth, of pleasures lying upon the unfolding
intellect plenteously as morning dew-drops,--of knowledge inhaled
insensibly like the fragrance,--of dispositions stealing into the spirit
like music from unknown quarters,--of images uncalled for and rising up
like exhalations,--of hopes plucked like beautiful wild flowers from the
ruined tombs that border the highways of antiquity, to make a garland
for a living forehead;--in a word, we have been treating of nature as a
teacher of truth through joy and through gladness, and as a creatress of
the faculties by a process of smoothness and delight. We have made no
mention of fear, shame, sorrow, nor of ungovernable and vexing thoughts;
because, although these have been and have done mighty service, they are
ov