orrowing
ten years at least from his own father--auld-farrant as a Fairy, and
gash as the Last of the Lairds.

Dearly do we love the young--yea, the young of all animals--the young
swallows twittering from their straw-built shed--the young lambs
bleating on the lea--the young bees, God bless them! on their first
flight away off to the heather--the young butterflies, who, born in the
morning, will die of old age ere night--the young salmon-fry glorying in
the gravel at the first feeling of their fins--the young adders basking,
ere they can bite, in the sun, as yet unconscious, like sucking
satirists, of their stings--young pigs, pretty dears! all a-squeak with
their curled tails after prolific grumphie--young lions and tigers,
charming cubs! like very Christian children nuzzling in their nurse's
breast--young devils, ere Satan has sent them to Sin, who keeps a
fashionable boarding-school in Hades, and sends up into the world
above-ground only her finished scholars.

Oh! lad of the lightsome forehead! Thou art smiling at Us; and for the
sake of our own Past we enjoy thy Present, and pardon the contumely with
which thou silently insultest our thin grey hairs. Just such another
"were we at Ravensburg." "_Carpe Diem_" was then our motto, as now it is
yours; "no fear that dinner cool," for we fed then, as you feed now, on
flowers and fruits of Eden. We lived then under the reign of the Seven
Senses; Imagination was Prime Minister, and Reason, as Lord-Chancellor,
had the keeping of the Royal Conscience; and they were kings, not
tyrants--we subjects, not slaves. Supercilious as thou art, Puer, art
thou as well read in Greek as we were at thy flowering age? Come close
that we may whisper in thine ear--while we lean our left shoulder on
thine--our right on the Crutch. The time will come when thou wilt be, O
Son of the Morning! even like unto the shadow by thy side! Was he not
once a mountaineer? If he be a vainglorious boaster, give him the lie,
Ben-y-glo and thy brotherhood--ye who so often heard our shouts mixed
with the red-deer's belling--tossed back in exultation by Echo,
Omnipresent Auditress on youth's golden hills.

Know, all ye Neophytes, that three lovely Sisters often visit the old
man's solitude--Memory, Imagination, Hope. It would be hard to say which
is the most beautiful. Memory has deep, dark, quiet eyes, and when she
closes their light, the long eyelashes lie like shadows on her pensive
cheeks, that smile fain