rs with a definite end: I was to be the _Advocatus_, not I
hope _Diaboli_, but _Juventutis_; I was to state temperately the beliefs
of youth as opposed to the contentions of age; to go over all the field
where the two differ, and produce at last a little volume of special
pleadings which I might call, without misnomer, "Life at Twenty-five."
But times kept changing, and I shared in the change. I clung hard to
that entrancing age; but, with the best will, no man can be twenty-five
for ever. The old, ruddy convictions deserted me, and, along with them,
the style that fits their presentation and defence. I saw, and indeed my
friends informed me, that the game was up. A good part of the volume
would answer to the long-projected title; but the shadows of the
prison-house are on the rest.

It is good to have been young in youth and, as years go on, to grow
older. Many are already old before they are through their teens; but to
travel deliberately through one's ages is to get the heart out of a
liberal education. Times change, opinions vary to their opposite, and
still this world appears a brave gymnasium, full of sea-bathing, and
horse-exercise, and bracing, manly virtues; and what can be more
encouraging than to find the friend who was welcome at one age, still
welcome at another? Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the
best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded
beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to
another.

These papers are like milestones on the wayside of my life; and as I
look back in memory, there is hardly a stage of that distance but I see
you present with advice, reproof, or praise. Meanwhile, many things have
changed, you and I among the rest: but I hope that our sympathy, founded
on the love of our art, and nourished by mutual assistance, shall
survive these little revolutions undiminished, and, with God's help,
unite us to the end.

R. L. S.

DAVOS PLATZ, 1881.

I

"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE"

I

With the single exception of Falstaff, all Shakespeare's characters are
what we call marrying men. Mercutio, as he was own cousin to Benedick
and Biron, would have come to the same end in the long run. Even Iago
had a wife, and, what is far stranger, he was jealous. People like
Ja