be
depended on as an unvaccinated infant. "It is extraordinary," says Lord
Beaconsfield, one of the brightest and best preserved of youths up to
the date of his last novel,[5] "it is extraordinary how hourly and how
violently change the feelings of an unexperienced young man." And this
mobility is a special talent entrusted to his care; a sort of
indestructible virginity; a magic armour, with which he can pass unhurt
through great dangers and come unbedaubed out of the miriest passages.
Let him voyage, speculate, see all that he can, do all that he may; his
soul has as many lives as a cat; he will live in all weathers, and never
be a halfpenny the worse. Those who go to the devil in youth, with
anything like a fair chance, were probably little worth saving from the
first; they must have been feeble fellows--creatures made of putty and
pack-thread, without steel or fire, anger or true joyfulness, in their
composition we may sympathise with their parents, but there is not much
cause to go into mourning for themselves; for, to be quite honest, the
weak brother is the worst of mankind.

When the old man waggles his head and says, "Ah, so I thought when I was
your age," he has proved the youth's case. Doubtless, whether from
growth of experience or decline of animal heat, he thinks so no longer;
but he thought so while he was young; and all men have thought so while
they were young, since there was dew in the morning or hawthorn in May;
and here is another young man adding his vote to those of previous
generations and rivetting another link to the chain of testimony. It is
as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated,
to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other
wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn grey, or mothers
to love their offspring, or heroes to die for something worthier than
their lives.

By way of an apologue for the aged, when they feel more than usually
tempted to offer their advice, let me recommend the following little
tale. A child who had been remarkably fond of toys (and in particular of
lead soldiers) found himself growing to the level of acknowledged
boyhood without any abatement of this childish taste. He was thirteen;
already he had been taunted for dallying over-long about the playbox; he
had to blush if he was found among his lead soldiers; the shades of the
prison-house were closing about him with a vengeance. There is nothing
mo