letter to the _Times_!

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MRS. RAM was heard to remark that she "didn't know a finer body of
men than the Yokel Loamanry." Probably the old lady meant the Local
Yeomanry.

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LETTERS TO ABSTRACTIONS.

NO. XVI.--TO YOUTHFULNESS.

You are much misunderstood. For it is supposed that those who in this
world bear your stamp upon them are to be recognised without trouble
by the mere calculation of their years of life. No notion can be
further from the truth. Mere absence of wrinkles, the presence or
colour of the hair on the head, the elasticity of limbs, these do not
of themselves, I protest, testify to youthfulness. I knew a lad of
twenty, who, in the judgment of the world, was young. In mine he was
one of the hoariest as he was one of the least scrupulous of men. No
veteran that I ever met could have put him up to any trick, or added
any experience to his store. He seemed to have a marvellous and
intuitive experience of the ways of life, and of the tricks of men.
No shady society came amiss to him. He gambled, in his way, as coolly,
and with as careful a precision, as _Barry Lyndon_; he met the keen
frequenters of the betting-ring on equal terms, and contrived, amid
that vortex to keep his head above water. He had a faultless taste
in wine--he knew a good cigar by an instinct. It is hardly necessary
to add that, with all these accomplishments, he held and expressed
the meanest opinion of human nature in general. Not even Sir ROBERT
WALPOLE could have more cynically estimated the price at which men
might be bought. As for women, this precocious paragon despised them,
and women, as is their wont, repaid him by admiration, and, here
and there, by genuine affection. I shudder to think how he might
have developed in the course of years. It happened, however, that a
shipwreck--a form of disaster against which cynicism and precocity
afford no protection--removed him from the world before he had come of
age. Now, to call this infant young, would have been a mockery. To all
outward appearance, indeed, he was a boy, but his mind was that of a
selfish and used-up _roue_ of sixty, without illusions, and without
hope.

[Illustration]

Let me pass to a more pleasant subject, and one with which you,
my dear boy, are more closely connected. I refer to my old friend.
General VANGARD, the kindest and best-natured man that ever drew
half-pay. Seventy