than settled age its sables and its weeds, importing health and
graveness." Youth is like Adam's early walk in the Garden of Paradise.
"The senses," says Edmund Burke, "are unworn and tender, and the
whole frame is awake in every part." The dew lies upon the grass. No
smoke of busy life has darkened or stained the morning of our day. The
pure light shines about us. "If any little mist happen to rise," says
Willmott, "the sunbeam of hope catches and glorifies it."
[Illustration: "Youth is our Italy and Greece, full of Gods and
Temples." Page 64.]
Youth is rash. It "skips like the hare over the meshes of good counsel,"
says Shakspeare. "Then let our nets and snares of benevolence be laid
with the more cunning. Youth is a continual intoxication," says
Rochefoucauld; "it is the fever of reason." We must cool this fever,
spread around it cheering flowers of truth, bathe it in the water-brooks
of gentleness and self-sacrifice. "Young men," according to
Chesterfield, "are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men
are to think themselves sober enough," yet joined with this self-esteem,
we find that "youth is ever confiding; and we can almost forgive its
disinclination to follow the counsels of age, for the sake of the
generous disdain with which it rejects suspicion." "How charming the
young would be," writes Arthur Helps, "with their freshness,
fearlessness, and truthfulness, if only--to take a metaphor from
painting--they would make more use of grays and other neutral tints,
instead of dabbing on so recklessly the strongest positives in color."
Why should their colors not be rich? Are not the hues upon their cheeks
as rich as the sunset?