have much to learn from the young. I think it is never wise to draw back from the advancing current at any time, and, isolating oneself in a fancied attainment, look with contempt at those who eagerly press on. You had the start of them, but you are letting them, beginning where you had left off, advance beyond where you had attained.

So I think it would be well that Age and Youth too, should strike a bargain, and march on still side by side. They may live together, believe me, if they will, and greatly, too, to their mutual advantage. They must watch against faults on both sides, which would make a erevice, widening into a gulf, between them. Age must not be too hard upon Childhood and Youth. (I often wonder that a child should "catch it" so for breaking a window; when I think we must all recall our own trembling after such an untoward mishap.) Neither must Age be too patronizing. Its superior knowledge and wisdom must be rather felt than obtruded; rather, as I said, taken as food than as medicine. In a word, Age must rather be studious to avoid than to create the rising of a gulf between its interests, tastes, and enjoyments, and those of Youth.

Last time I went home from my curacy I found my father reading Tennyson carefully. He said that though Byron, Scott, etc., were the poets of his youth, and therefore, naturally, his chief poet friends, yet that he did not wish to fall into the way of men who deny credit and merit to all that comes after a certain period of their life. He wished to drink of the well at which the new generation drank so thirstily and so enjoyably. And was not this wise? Not that any rivals of later years will be likely to stir the same emotions with those that came in our own young days of freshest Poetry and Love, κar' ¿έoxýv.-Nay, the Poet of a new generation must necessarily be singing more to them than to the last. And therefore he will hit the wants and reach the hearts of the young much more exactly and completely than theirs whom other strains have satisfied ere the silver streak hallowed their heads.But that it shows a larger mind to admit merit in later works, and to put yourself into the way of enjoying it, than to sneer from your seclusion at that which, because new, you will not even examine.

One word for Youth. Let not the young be too apt to sneer at the advice and opinion of those whose gray hairs demand their respect and attention. Let that reverence be given, which themselves, at that age, will think their due. After all, there is not much new really under the sun; what we call so, is mostly yesterday's joint served up in another form to-day. And the longer the young live, the more they will perceive that the old-world wisdom and maxims which they derided, the old-world advice of which they were so impatient, was therefore entitled to their regard, for the very reason that it was old. Rehoboam found that out, when too late; and Rehoboam is the type

of many a self-wise young man now-a-days; both in his headlong folly, and his useless regret. Walk much with the Old, young man! Let him lean on your strong arm; but let his wise head choose the way. Do not think it clever to slight your Father's warning and advice, and to call it antiquated. Rather, guiding your course by it, make him your counsellor, your friend. Omit no respect, no attention, no kindness; one day you will not have the chance of offering it. Check that hasty answer ere it leave your lips; one day you will remember it, and wish it unsaid; "Bear and forbear," let this homely maxim be the motto of both old and young. How beautiful a thing is old Age, when it is beautiful! How beautiful also is Youth! Spring or Autumn; to which shall we give the palm ? Let each bear it; for each is worthy. Men give the palm of Hope into the hands of youth, and that of Memory into those of age. And, looking only at this world's concerns, this is rightly adjudged.

Age misses something of the glory and the joy of life; and the pulses have lost that mad ecstacy of beating. And of this the old "Youth and Age,"

speak with a cheery sadness; Coleridge in his speaks all sadly, and therefore very unwisely. Campbell the same, in those mournfully beautiful lines, "The River of Life." But Wordsworth, while missing the glee of living; while rather owning than complaining that

"It is not now as it hath been of yore;

while he owns

while he asks

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more!"

"That there hath passed a glory from the earth ;"

"Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream ?"

yet has no such unworthy repinings in his song. He knew that the blossom might be lovelier, but that the fruit was better. He could

say

"-And yet the wiser mind

Mourns less for what Age takes away,

Than what it leaves behind.

The blackbird amid leafy trees

The lark above the hill

Let loose their carols when they please,

Are quiet when they will;

With nature never do they wage

A foolish strife; they see

A happy youth, and their old age

Is beautiful and free.

HOPES OF THE DAWN AND THE EVENING.

345

And he can thus sum up the harvest, which is surely better in the barn, if fairer on the field

"What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not; rather, find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind."

Yet not "for ever," O Poet! I think that glory and that gleam, that vanished splendour, will lie on the grass, on the flowers, in that Better Land, and never fleet from that Scenery! I think we shall find again something very like that glad fresh poetic joy, that was so dear even to remember, in this world of evanescent glory! My faith is strong that nothing beautiful, once possessed, is wholly lost to us. If it was beautiful really, it came from God, and shall we not, in Him, find it again?

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

There may be deeper truth in this than even its Poet knew.

I draw near to an end of this talk about the Evening and the Dawn of life's day. I said above, that the palm of Hope was rightly conceded to the Dawn, if we look only at this world's concerns.

Yea; and only so. The golden and crimson sun has set, no doubt, and the heavens are sober and gray, save where a warm light lingers over his grave. But is the light of Memory the only light in that sky? See, for one orb gone, and that only seeming brighter because ncarer, ten millions gather into that declining firmament! Many of them suns; yea, suns, of which that just set is only a planet. The Morning hoped for the Sun. The Evening hopes for myriad Systems of more than Suns.

"Palmam qui meruit, ferat."

O Christian! shall it be, then, to Age, or to Youth, that we at last adjudge Hope as the deserved palm?