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?


DOES NOT THE CHERRY

"dab on" the scarlet and the carmine direct from the gorgeous sun
himself? Age marvels at the happiness of youth. The sombre lessons of
the world have left their marks on the mind of the one; the other has
everything to learn. It would seem as though its residence had been (as
the poet has written so beautifully at the head of the chapter) in some
Paradise, whence, it issued to this earth, "trailing clouds of glory" as
it came. Age has suffered from the heats and dust of the previous day,