m, or the country parish! Live virtuously, make honest
friends, read the good old books, lay up a store of kindly
recollections, of firelit rooms in venerable courts, of pleasant talks,
of innocent festivities. Very fresh is the cool morning air, very
fragrant is the newly-lighted bird's-eye, very lively is the clink of
knives and forks, very keen is the savour of the roast beef that floats
up to the dark rafters of the College Hall. But the days are short and
the terms are few; and do not forget to be a sensible as well as a
good-humoured young man!"

Thackeray, in a delightful ballad, invites a pretty page to wait till
he comes to forty years: well, I have waited--indeed, I have somewhat
overshot the mark--and to-day the sight of all this brisk life, going
on just as it used to do, with the same insouciance and the same
merriment, makes me wish to reflect, to gather up the fragments, to see
if it is all loss, all declension, or whether there is something left,
some strength in what remains behind.

I have a theory that one ought to grow older in a tranquil and
appropriate way, that one ought to be perfectly contented with one's
time of life, that amusements and pursuits ought to alter naturally and
easily, and not be regretfully abandoned. One ought not to be dragged
protesting from the scene, catching desperately at every doorway and
balustrade; one should walk off smiling. It is easier said than done.
It is not a pleasant moment when a man first recognizes that he is out
of place in the football field, that he cannot stoop with the old
agility to pick up a skimming stroke to cover-point, that dancing is
rather too heating to be decorous, that he cannot walk all day without
undue somnolence after dinner, or rush off after a heavy meal without
indigestion. These are sad moments which we all of us reach, but which
are better laughed over than fretted over. And a man who, out of sheer
inability to part from boyhood, clings desperately and with apoplectic
puffings to these things is an essentially grotesque figure. To listen
to young men discussing one of these my belated contemporaries, and to
hear one enforcing on another the amusement to be gained from watching
the old buffer's manoeuvres, is a lesson against undue youthfulness.
One can indeed give amusement without loss of dignity, by being open to
being induced to join in such things occasionally in an elderly way,
without any attempt to disguise deficiencies. But