s Dr. Trumbull.

It was the youth Hercules that performed the Twelve Labors.
Enthusiastic youth faces the sun, it shadows all behind it. The heart
rules youth; the head, manhood. Alexander was a mere youth when he
rolled back the Asiatic hordes that threatened to overwhelm European
civilization almost at its birth. Napoleon had conquered Italy at
twenty-five. Byron and Raphael died at thirty-seven, an age which has
been fatal to many a genius, and Poe lived but a few months longer.
Romulus founded Rome at twenty. Pitt and Bolingbroke were ministers
almost before they were men. Gladstone was in Parliament in early
manhood. Newton made some of his greatest discoveries before he was
twenty-five. Keats died at twenty-five, Shelley at twenty-nine.
Luther was a triumphant reformer at twenty-five. It is said that no
English poet ever equaled Chatterton at twenty-one. Whitefield and
Wesley began their great revival as students at Oxford, and the former
had made his influence felt throughout England before he was
twenty-four. Victor Hugo wrote a tragedy at fifteen, and had taken
three prizes at the Academy and gained the title of Master before he
was twenty.

Many of the world's greatest geniuses never saw forty years. Never
before has the young man, who is driven by his enthusiasm, had such an
opportunity as he has to-day. It is the age of young men and young
women. Their ardor is their crown, before which the languid and the
passive bow.

But if enthusiasm is irresistible in youth, how much more so is it when
carried into old age! Gladstone at eighty had ten times the weight and
power that any man of twenty-five would have with the same ideals. The
glory of age is only the glory of its enthusiasm, and the respect paid
to white hairs is reverence to a heart fervent, in spite of the torpid
influence of an enfeebled body. The "Odyssey" was the creation of a
blind old man, but that old man was Homer.

The contagious zeal of an old man, Peter the Hermit, rolled the
chivalry of Europe upon the ranks of Islam.

Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, won battles at ninety-four, and refused a
crown at ninety-six. Wellington planned and superintended
fortifications at eighty. Bacon and Humboldt were enthusiastic
students to the last gasp. Wise old Montaigne was shrewd in his
gray-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of
gout and colic.

Dr. Johnson's best work, "The Lives of the Poets," was writte