lacks the resignation which comes of knowing that
our aims, our loves, ourselves, will alter; and that we shall not
eternally regret what we could not eternally covet. Hence, also, the
fine despair and frequent suicide of youthful heroes and heroines. Poor
young Werther, in his sky-blue _Frack_ and striped yellow waistcoat,
cannot believe that the time will come when he will tune the spinet of
some other Charlotte--nay, follow in the footsteps of the enlightened
minister, his patron; bury himself in protocols and look forward to a
diplomatic game of whist rather than to a country dance with meeting
hands and eyes. And it is mere waste of breath to sermon him on the
subject: lend him the pistols, and hope that (as in the humaner version
of the opera) he will not use them. As to certain other forestallings of
experience, they would be positively indecent and barbarous! You would
die of shame if the young widow happened to overhear you saying (what is
heaven's truth, and a most consoling one) that her baby, which now
represents only so much time and love she might have given, all, all, to
_him_ alone, is the only good thing which that worthless dead husband
could ever have furnished her. And as to hinting in her presence that
she will some day be much, much happier with dear Quixotic Dobbin than
with that coxcomb of an Osborne, why the bare thought of such indecorum
makes us feel like sinking into the ground! We must be sympathizing, and
a little short of truthful, with poor distressed young people; above
all, never seek to lighten their disappointments with visions of brisk
octogenarians, one foot in the grave, enjoying a rubber!

And this, no doubt, is a providential arrangement--I mean this youthful
incapacity of grasping the consolations brought by Time. For, after all,
life, being there, has to be lived; and maybe life would be lived in a
half-hearted fashion did we suspect its many compensations, including
what may, methinks, be the last, most solemn one. Should we jump hastily
out of bed and bestir ourselves with the zest of the new day, if we
thoroughly realized what is, however, matter of common experience, to
wit: that at the day's close, sleep, rest without dreams or thought of
awaking, may be as welcome as all this pleasant bustle of the morning?
The knowledge of these mysteries, initiation into which comes late and
silently, is, as I hinted, perhaps the final compensation; allowing us
to face the order of thing