bish to touch and thrill you as it used to do? Well, remember that
it suits successive generations at their enthusiastic stage. There are
poets whose great admirers are for the most part under twenty years
old; but probably almost every clever young person regards them at some
period in his life as among the noblest of mortals. And it is no ignoble
ambition to win the ardent appreciation of even immature tastes and
hearts. Its brief endurance is compensated by its intensity. You sit by
the fireside and read your leisurely "Times," and you feel a tranquil
enjoyment. You like it better than the "Sorrows of Werter," but you do
not like it a twentieth part as much as you once liked the "Sorrows
of Werter." You would be interested in meeting the man who wrote that
brilliant and slashing leader; but you would not regard him with
speechless awe, as something more than human. Yet, remembering all the
weaknesses out of which men grow, and on which they look back with a
smile or sigh, who does not feel that there is a charm which will not
depart about early youth? Longfellow knew that he would reach the hearts
of most men, when he wrote such a verse as this:--

"The green trees whispered low and mild;
It was a sound of joy!
They were my playmates when a child,
And rocked me in their arms so wild;
Still they looked at me and smiled,
As if I were a boy!"

Such, readers as are young men will understand what has already been
said as to the bitter indignation with which the writer, some years ago,
listened to self-conceited elderly persons who put aside the arguments
and the doings of younger men with the remark that these younger men
were _boys_. There are few terms of reproach which I have heard uttered
with looks of such deadly ferocity. And there are not many which excite
feelings of greater wrath in the souls of clever young men. I remember
how in those days I determined to write an essay which should scorch up
and finally destroy all these carping and malicious critics. It was to
be called "A Chapter on Boys." After an introduction of a sarcastic and
magnificent character, setting out views substantially the same as those
contained in the speech of Lord Chatham in reply to Walpole, which boys
are taught to recite at school, that essay was to go on to show that
a great part of English literature was written by very young men.
Unfortunately, on proceeding to investigate the matter carefully, it
appeared that the