ightingales that torture us with their murmurings
towards the latter end of May--whose very names, when written down upon
smooth paper, or, as formerly, graved upon tablets of wax with
instruments of ivory, are as disagreeable to the eye as the crude
colouring of the Atlantic Ocean, or the unimaginable ugliness of a fine
summer's day in the midland counties of England. But at last there seems
to be a prospect of better things, the flush of a wonderful dawn in the
hitherto shadowy sky. A star with a crimson mouth has arisen in the East
to guide wise men and women out of the straight and narrow way down
which they have been stumbling so long. I believe, I tremblingly dare to
believe, that a bright era of undisciplined folly is about to dawn over
the modern world, and therefore I speak to you, beautiful pink children,
and I ask you to recognise your youth, and your exquisite potentiality
for foolishness. For in youth, only in delicate, delicious youth, can we
acquire the rudiments of the beautiful art of folly. When we are old we
are so crusted with the hideous lichen of wisdom and experience, so
gnarled with thought, and weather-beaten with knowledge, that we can
only teach. We have lost the power to learn, as all teachers infallibly
do."

At this point in Esme's address the face of the national schoolmaster, a
grey person, rather conceited in his own wisdom than wise in his own
conceit, began to present--as a magic lantern presents pictures upon a
sheet--various expressions, all of which partook of uneasiness and
indignation. He glanced furtively around, stared defiantly at the
children, and shifted from one foot to the other like a boy who is being
lectured. Esme observed his disquietude with considerable satisfaction.

"People teach in order to conceal their ignorance, as people smile in
order to conceal their tears, or sin, too often, merely to draw away a
curious observation from the amplitude and endurance of their virtue.
The beautiful falling generation are learning to do things for their own
sake, and not for the sake of Mrs. Grundy, who will soon sit alone in
her dowdy disorder, a chaperon bereft of her debutante, the hopeless and
frowsy leader of a lost and discredited cause. Yes, wisdom has nearly
had its day, and the stars are beginning to twinkle in the violet skies
of folly.

"It is not, alas! given to all of us to be properly foolish. The custom
of succeeding ages has rendered wisdom a hereditary habit w