Continuations are proverbially failures, and yet it is perhaps a
consequence of the writer's realization of characters that some seem
as if they could not be parted with, and must be carried on in the
mind, and not only have their after-fates described, but their minds
and opinions under the modifications of advancing years and altered
circumstances.

Turner and other artists have been known literally to see colours in
absolutely different hues as they grew older, and so no doubt it is
with thinkers. The outlines may be the same, the tints are
insensibly modified and altered, and the effect thus far changed.

Thus it is with the writers of fiction. The young write in full
sympathy with, as well as for, the young, they have a pensive
satisfaction in feeling and depicting the full pathos of a tragedy,
and on the other hand they delight in their own mirth, and fully
share it with the beings of their imagination, or they work out great
questions with the unhesitating decision of their youth.

But those who write in elder years look on at their young people, not
with inner sympathy but from the outside. Their affections and
comprehension are with the fathers, mothers, and aunts; they dread,
rather than seek, piteous scenes, and they have learnt that there are
two sides to a question, that there are many stages in human life,
and that the success or failure of early enthusiasm leaves a good
deal more yet to come.

Thus the vivid fancy passes away, which the young are carried along
with, and the older feel refreshed by; there is still a sense of
experience, and a pleasure in tracing the perspective from another