of nations and races, diverse in their position and capacities, but identical in nature and one in destiny. Viewed comprehensively, its individuals and events comprise the incidents of an uncompleted biography of man, a biography long, obscure, full of puzzling facts for thought to interpret, and more puzzling breaks for thought to bridge, but, on the whole, exhibiting man as moving and man as moving forward. If we scrutinize the character of this progress, we shall find that the forces which propel society in the direction of improvement, and the ideas we form of the nature of that improvement, are the forces and the ideas of youth. The world, indeed, moves under the impulses of youth to realize the ideals of youth. It has youth for its beginning and youth for its end; for youth is alive, and progress is but the movement of life to attain fuller, higher, and more vivid life. Youth, too, is nearer to those celestial fountains of existence whence inspiration pours into the heart and light streams into the brain. Indeed, all the qualities which constitute the life of the soul, and which preserve in vigor and health even the practical

dor, generosity, love, hope, faith, courage, cheer, — all these youth feels stirring and burning in its own breast, and aches to see fulfilled in the common experience of the race. But in age these fine raptures are apt to be ridiculed as the amiable follies of juvenile illusions. In parting, however, with what it derides as illusions, does not age part with the whole of joy and by far the most important element of wisdom? The world it so sagaciously aims to inaugurate, what is it but a stationary and decrepit world, a world which would soon decay, and drop into the abyss of nothingness, were it not for the rejuvenating vitality poured into it by the youth it cynically despises ? True wisdom, indeed, springs from the wide brain which is fed from the deep heart; and it is only when age warms its withering conceptions at the memory of its youthful fire, when it makes experience serve aspiration, and knowledge illumine the difficult paths through which thoughts thread their way into facts, it is only then that age becomes broadly and nobly wise.

If we thus discern in the sentiments and faculties of youth the animating