The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-05-01

ent meekness in the air. The lyrica
up-burst of the lark at such a tim
would be incongruoHs. The oni7
sounds suitable to the season are th
rusty cav of the homeward-slidin,
rook-the creaking of the vain return
ing empty from the farm-yard. Their
is an unrest which men miscall de
light" and of that "unrest" youth i
for the most part composed. From tina
middle age is free. The setting suns o
youth are crimson and gold; the set
ting suns of middle age
Do take sober oring from an eye
That hath kept watch DER mans mortality
Youth is the slave of beautiful faces
and fine eyes, and silver-sweet voices
they distract, madden, alarm. To mid
die age they are but the gracefullasi
statues, the loveliest poems. They de.
light but burn not. They awake nc
passion, they heighten no pulse. And
the imaginative man of middle age pos
sesses after a fashion all the passionate
turbulence, all the keen delights of his
earlier days. They are not dead-they
are dwelling in the ante chamber of his
memory, awaiting his call : and when
they are called they wear an ethereal
something which is not their own. The
muses. are the daughters of memory :
youth is the time to love, but middle
age the period at which the best love
| poetry is written. And middle age too
the early period of it, when man is
master OF his instruments and knows
what he can do-is the best season of
intellectual activity. The playful ca
| perlng flames of a newly kindled fire is
pretty sight but not nearly so effec-
hN11 g. -
when the flames are gone and the whole
mass of fuel has become caked into a
sober redness that emits q steady glow.
There is nothing in this world which
time does not improve. A silver we'd
ding is better than the voice of the
Epithalamium. And the most beauti-
ful face that ever was is made vet more
beautiful when there is laid upon it the
reverence of silver hairs.
There is a certain even-handed JUS
tice in time and for wha he takes
away he gives us something in return.
He robs us of elasticity of limb and
spirit, and in its place he brings tran
guilty and repose-the mild autumnal
weather of the soul. He takes away
hope, but he gives us memory. And
the settled, unfuctuating atmosphere of
middle-age is no bad exchange for the
stormful emotions. the passionate cries
and suspenses of the earlier day. The
constitutional melancholy of the mid
dle-aged man is a dim background on
which the pale flowers of life are brought
out in the tenderest relief. Youth is
the time for action, middle-age for
thought. In youth we hurriealy crop
the herbage; in middle-age, in a shell
,D1o IL, l,
cud. In youth, red handed, red-ankled. !
with songs and shOHtings, we gather in
the grapes in middle-age, under our
own fig-tree, or in quiet gossip with a |
friend, we drink the wine free of all |
turbid lees. Youth is a lyrical poet,
middle-age a quiet essayist, fond of re- |
counting experiences and of appending !
a moral to every incident. Ia youth |
the world is strange and unfamiliar, |
novel and exciting, everything wears |
the face and garb of q stranger; in mid !
dle-age the world is covered over with !
reminiscence as with a garment-it is
made hOmely with usage, it is made /
sacred with graves. The middle-aged !
man can go nowhere without treading
the mark of his own footsteps. And in |
too-provided the man has
been a good and an ordinarily happy
One-along with this mental tranquil
ty, there comes a corresponding sweet
ness of the moral atmosphere. He has
seen the good and evil that are in the |
world, the ups and downs, the almost
general desire of the men and women
therein to do the right thing if they
could but see how-and he has learned
to be uncensorious. humane to attrib-
ute the best motives to every action,
and to be chary of imputing q sweeping
and cruel blame. He has a quiet smile
for the vain-glorious boast; feeling of
respect for shabby-genteel virtues a
pity for the threard- bare garments
proudly worn, and for the napless hat
glazed into more than pristine brillian-
cy from frequent brushing after rain.
He would not be satirical for the world.
He has no finger of scorn to point at
anything under the sun. He has a
hearty "AGlen" for every good wish,
and in the worst cases he leans to a yer
dict of not proven. And along with
this pleasant blandness and charity,
certain grave, serious humor, 6" smile
and tear on the lip in the cye," is no
5iceable frequently in middle-aged per-
sons-a phase of humOr peculiar to that
period of life, as the chrysanthemum to
December. Pity lies at the bottom of
t, just as pity lies, unsupported, at the
bottom of love. Perhaps this special
Iuality of humOr-with its sadness of | 1
its mirth with the heart
ache, its gayety growing out of deepest
like a crocus on child's I
approaches more closely
he perfection than in some passages of
Mr.. Hawthorne's writings-who was a
not IOr
And although middle-aged persons have | I
ost the actual possession of youth, yet 1
n virtue of this humor they compre- 1
lend it, see all around it, enter imagi-
latively into every sweet and bitter of [
t. They wear the key memory at their
yirdles, and they can open every door
n the chamber of youth. And it is also
n virtue of this peculiar humOr that
Mr.. Dickens Little Nell. to the contra
-y-it is only middle-aged persons who
,an, either as poets as artists, create for
is a child. There is no more beautiful !
hing on earth than an old mans love
Tor his granddaughter more beautiful
even-from the absence of all suspicion
Of direct personal bias or interest-than
MS love for his own daughter and it is
1nly the meditative, sad-hearted, mid
1le-aged man who can creep into the
heart of child and interpret it, and
show forth the new nature to us in the
subtle cross lights of contrast and sug- I
gestion. Imaginatively thus, wrinkles
If age become the dimples of infancy.
Wordsworth was not very young man
when he held the colloquy with the
little maid who insisted in her childish
ogic that he was one of seven. Mr..
was not Young man when
le painted "Pearl" by the side of the
brook in the forest and he was middle
lged and more when he drew " Pansie,"
he most exquisite child that lives in
English words. And when speaking of
of its peculiar tranquility
md humor, why not tell of its peculiar
beauty as we'll? Men and women make
heir own beauty or their own ugliness.
Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in
,ne of his novels of a man "who was
Iglier than he had any business to be ;"
md, if he could but read it, every hu-
nan being carries his life in his face,
md is good looking or the reverse as
hat life has been good or evil. On our
eature the fine chisels of thought and
emotion are eternally at work. Beauty
S not the monopoly of blooming young