envy. With so much youth forever in her heart, it must be hard for our
Charlesbridge to grow old: the generations arise and pass away but in her
veins is still this tide of warm blood, century in and century out, so
much the same from one age to another that it would be hardy to say it was
not still one youthfulness. There is a print of the village as it was a
cycle since, showing the oldest of the college buildings and upon the
street in front a scholar in his scholar's-cap and gown, giving his arm to
a very stylish girl of that period, who is dressed wonderfully like the
girl of ours, so that but for the student's antique formality of costume,
one might believe that he was handing her out to take the horse-car. There
is no horse-car in the picture,--that is the only real difference between
then and now in our Charlesbridge, perennially young and gay. Have there
not ever been here the same grand ambitions, the same high hopes,--and is
not the unbroken succession of youth in these?

As for other life on the horse-car, it shows to little or no effect, as I
have said. You can, of course, detect certain classes; as, in the morning
the business-men going in, to their counters or their desks, and in the
afternoon the shoppers coming out, laden with paper parcels. But I think
no one can truly claim to know the regular from the occasional passengers
by any greater cheerfulness in the faces of the latter. The horse-car will
suffer no such inequality as this, but reduces us all to the same level of
melancholy. It would be but a very unworthy kind of art which should seek
to describe people by such merely external traits as a habit of carrying
baskets or large travelling-bags in the car; and the present muse scorns
it, but is not above speaking of the frequent presence of those lovely
young girls in which Boston and the suburban towns abound, and who,
whether they appear with rolls of music in their hands, or books from the
circulating-libraries, or pretty parcels or hand-bags, would brighten even
the horse-car if fresh young looks and gay and brilliant costumes could do