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
faculties of the mind,--freshness, ardor, 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 and impelling soul of historical events,--if, wherever in
history we mark a great movement of humanity, we commonly detect a young
man at its head or at its heart,--we must still, I admit, discriminate
between youth and young men, between the genial action of youthful
qualities and the imperfections and perversions of youthful character.
Youth we commonly represent under the image of morn,--clear, fresh,
cheerful, radiant, the green sward trembling and gleaming with ecstasy
as the rising sun transfigures its dew-drops into diamonds; but then
morn is sometimes black with clouds, and foul with vapors, and terrible
with tempests. In treating, therefore, of the position and influence of
young men in history, let us begin with those in whom the energies of
youth were early perverted from their appropriate objects, and fell
under the dominion of sensual appetites or malignant passions.

And first, it is important we should bear in mind, that, in this