spirations."

Alas, alas! my friend,--my young friend, for your hair is not yet
whitened,--I am afraid you are too nearly right. No doubt,--no doubt.
Teacups are not coffee-cups. They do not hold so much. Their pallid
infusion is but a feeble stimulant compared with the black decoction
served at the morning board. And so, perhaps, if wisdom like yours
were compatible with years like mine, I should drop my pen and make no
further attempts upon your patience.

But suppose that a writer who has reached and passed the natural limit
of serviceable years feels that he has some things which he would
like to say, and which may have an interest for a limited class of
readers,--is he not right in trying his powers and calmly taking the
risk of failure? Does it not seem rather lazy and cowardly, because he
cannot "beat his record," or even come up to the level of what he has
done in his prime, to shrink from exerting his talent, such as it is,
now that he has outlived the period of his greatest vigor? A singer who
is no longer equal to the trials of opera on the stage may yet please at
a chamber concert or in the drawing-room. There is one gratification
an old author can afford a certain class of critics: that, namely, of
comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity
to have its superiors brought within range, so to speak; and if the
ablest of them will only live long enough, and keep on writing, there is
no pop-gun that cannot reach him. But I fear that this is an unamiable
reflection, and I am at this time in a very amiable mood.

I confess that there is something agreeable to me in renewing my
relations with the reading public. Were it but a single appearance,
it would give me a pleasant glimpse of the time when I was known as a
frequent literary visitor. Many of my readers--if I can lure any from
the pages of younger writers will prove to be the children, or the
grandchildren, of those whose acquaintance I made something more than
a whole generation ago. I could depend on a kind welcome from my
contemporaries,--my coevals. But where are those contemporaries? Ay de
mi! as Carlyle used to exclaim,--Ah, dear me! as our old women say,--I
look round for them, and see only their vacant places. The old vine
cannot unwind its tendrils. The branch falls with the decay of its
support, and must cling to the new growths around it, if it would not
lie helpless in the dust. This paper is a new tendril, feeling it