hou destroy
thyself? Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why
shouldest thou die before thy time?" are evidently the words of an old
man when judging of himself or of others. A young man would have
spoken differently. He would have made no allowance; for anything like
compassion for an erring friend is as yet unknown to him. In an
autobiography written by an old man there is therefore a double
danger, first the indulgence of the old man, and secondly the kindly
feeling of the writer towards the object of his remarks.

All these difficulties stand before me like a mountain wall. And it
seems better to confess at once that an old man writing his own life
can never be quite just, however honest he tries to be. He may be too
indulgent, but he may also be too strict and stern. To say, for
instance, of a man that he has not kept his promise, would be a very
serious charge if brought against anybody else. Yet my oldest friend
in the world knows how many times he has made a promise to himself,
and has not only not kept it but has actually found excuses why he did
not keep it. The more sensitive our conscience becomes, the more
blameworthy many an act of our life seems to be, and what to an
ordinary conscience is no fault at all, becomes almost a sin under a
fiercer light.

This changes the moral atmosphere of youth when painted by an old man,
but the physical atmosphere also assumes necessarily a different hue.
Whether we like it or not, distance will always lend enchantment to
the view. If the azure hue is inseparable from distant mountains and
from the distant sky, we need not wonder that it veils the distant
paradise of youth. A man who keeps a diary from his earliest years,
and who as an old man simply copies from its yellow pages, may give us
a very accurate black and white image of what he saw as a boy, but as
in old faded photographs, the life and light are gone out of them,
while unassisted memory may often preserve tints of their former
reality. There is life and light in such recollections, but I am
willing to admit that memory can be very treacherous also. Thus in my
own case I can vouch that whatever I relate is carefully and
accurately transcribed from the tablets of my memory, as I see them
now, but though I can claim truthfulness to myself and to my memory, I
cannot pretend to photographic accuracy. I feel indeed for the
historian who uses such materials unless he has learnt to make
allowance for