by the arrest of this
glad mental growth and development. In some men, like Bacon and Burke,
it is not arrested at sixty. The only sign of age, indeed, which is
specially worth considering, is the mental sign; and this is that
gradual disintegration of the mind's vital powers by which intelligence
is separated from force, and experience from ability. Experience
detached from active power is no longer faculty of doing, but mere
memory of what has been done; and principles accordingly subside into
precedents, intuitions into arguments, and alertness of will into
calculation of risks. The highest quality of mind, the quality which
stamps it as an immortal essence, namely, that power, the fused compound
of all other powers, which sends its eagle glance over a whole field of
particulars, penetrates and grasps all related objects in one devouring
conception, and flashes a vivid insight of the only right thing to be
done amid a thousand possible courses of action,--the power, in short,
which gives confidence to will because it gives certainty to vision, and
is as much removed from recklessness as from irresolution,--this power
fades in mental age into that pausing, comparing, generalizing,
indecisive intelligence, which, however wise and valuable it may be in
those matters where success is not the prize of speed, is imbecile in
those conjunctures of affairs where events match faster than the mind
can syllogize, and to think and act a moment too late is defeat and
ruin.

It is for this reason that the large portion of history which relates to
war is so much the history of the triumphs of young men. Thus, Scipio
was twenty-nine when he gained the Battle of Zana; Charles the Twelfth,
nineteen when he gained the Battle of Narva; Conde, twenty-two when he
gained the Battle of Rocroi. At thirty-six, Scipio the younger was the
conqueror of Carthage; at thirty-six, Cortes was the conqueror of
Mexico; at thirty, Charlemagne was master of France and Germany; at
thirty-two, Clive had established the British power in India. Hannibal,
the greatest of military commanders, was only thirty, when, at Cannae, he
dealt an almost annihilating blow at the republic of Rome; and Napoleon
was only twenty-seven, when, on the plains of Italy, he outgeneralled
and defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of Austria. And in
respect to the wars which grew out of the French Revolution, what are
they but the record of old generals beaten by young g