ard VI., and nothing but the prominence of the most
unfortunate of their unfortunate daughters has preserved the memory of
their domestic despotism. Throughout all England it was the same, from
palace to castle, and from castle to hovel; and father and tyrant were
convertible terms. Youth must have been but a dreary time in those old
days. Scott's Sir Henry Lee, according to his son, kept strict rule over
his children, and he was a type of the antique knight, not of the
debauched cavalier, and would be obeyed, with or without reason. The
letters and the literature of the seventeenth century show, that, how
loose soever became other ties, parents maintained their hold on their
children with iron hands. Even the license of the Restoration left
fatherly rule largely triumphant and undisputed. When even "husbands, of
decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives," sons and
daughters were not spoiled by a sparing of the rod. Harshness was the
rule in every grade of life, and harsh indeed was parental rule, until
the reader wonders that there was not a general rebellion of women,
children, scholars, and apprentices against the savage ascendency of
husbands, fathers, pedagogues, and masters.

But the fashions of this world, whether good or evil, pass away. In the
eighteenth century we find parents becoming more humane, though still
keeping their offspring pretty stiffly bitted. They shared in the
general melioration of the age. The father was "honored sir," and was
not too familiar with his boys. The great outbreak at the close of the
century did much for the emancipation of the young; and by the time that
the present century had advanced to a third of its years, youth had so
far got the best of the conflict, and treated their elders with so
little consideration, that it was thought the latter were rather
presumptuous in remaining on earth after fifty. Youth began to organize
itself. Young Germany, Young France, and Young England became powers in
the world. Young Germany was revolutionary and metaphysical, and
nourished itself on bad beer and worse tobacco. Young France was
full-bearded and decidedly dirty, and so far deferred to the past as to
look for models in '93; and it had a strong reverence for that antique
sentiment which exhibited itself in the assassination of kings. Young
England was gentlemanly and cleanly, its leaders being of the patrician
order; and it looked to the Middle Ages for patterns of conduct. Its