Many men
have made all their fame in the morning, and enjoyed it through the rest
of their lives. Alexander, Pompey, Hannibal, Scipio, Napoleon, Charles
XII., Alexander Hamilton, Shelley, Keats, Bryant--hundreds of examples
readily come to the recollection, showing how thoroughly the mind can
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.
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