suggest it as an approximation to a
safe criterion, that a thing may be regarded as mature when it is
deliberately and dispassionately approved by an educated man of good
ability and above thirty years of age. No doubt a man of fifty may
hold that fifty is the age of sound taste and sense; and a youth of
twenty-three may maintain that he is as good a judge of human doings
now as he will ever be. I do not claim to have proposed an infallible
standard. I give you my present belief, being well aware that it is very
likely to alter.

It is not desirable that one's taste should become too fastidious, or
that natural feeling should be refined away. And a cynical young man is
bad, but a cynical old one is a great deal worse. The cynical young
man is probably shamming; he is a humbug, not a cynic. But the old man
probably _is_ a cynic, as heartless as he seems. And without thinking
of cynicism, real or affected, let us remember, that, though the taste
ought to be refined, and daily refining, it ought not to be refined
beyond being practically serviceable. Let things be good, but not too
good to be workable. It is expedient that a cart for conveying coals
should be of neat and decent appearance. Let the shafts be symmetrical,
the boards well-planed, the whole strong, yet not clumsy; and over the
whole let the painter's skill induce a hue rosy as beauty's cheek, or
dark-blue as her eye. All _that_ is well; and while the cart will carry
its coals satisfactorily, it will stand a good deal of rough usage, and
it will please the eye of the rustic who sits in it on an empty sack and
whistles as it moves along. But it would be highly inexpedient to make
that cart of walnut of the finest grain and marking, and to have it
French-polished. It would be too fine to be of use; and its possessor
would fear to scratch it, and would preserve it as a show, seeking some
plainer vehicle to carry his coals. In like manner, do not refine too
much either the products of the mind, or the sensibilities of the taste
which is to appreciate them. I know an amiable professor very different
from Dr. Dryasdust. He was a country clergyman,--a very interesting
plain preacher. But when he got his chair, he had to preach a good deal
in the college chapel; and by way of accommodating his discourses to an
academic audience, he rewrote them carefully, rubbed off all the salient
points, cooled down whatever warmth was in them to frigid accuracy,
toned down everythin