be trusted even in its immaturity. Youth is beautiful. It is "the gay
and pleasant spring of life, when joy is stirring in the dancing blood,
and nature calls us with a thousand songs to share her general feast."
"Keep true to the dreams of thy youth," sings Schiller. We love the
young. "The girls we love for what they are," says Goethe, "young men,
for what they promise to be." "The lovely time of youth," says Jean Paul
Richter, "is


OUR ITALY AND GREECE,

full of gods and temples." Let not the Vandals and Goths of after-life
swoop down upon this sunny region in our lives; yet if they do, may we
not look upon our noble ruins, our Coliseum and our Parthenon, in a kind
of classic love that shall endear and sanctify the rights of the young
about us and lengthen out their "golden age." Youth should be young.
Says Shakspeare: "Youth no less becomes


THE LIGHT AND CARELESS LIVERY THAT IT WEARS,

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