interrupt him. Dear sir, this kind of thing may
have been all very well in your time, as you call
it, and when you were a young man, but not
now; because the relative positions of senior and
junior are so very much changed of late years.

Why, to take the case of that very young
Pettiford. I assure you, that young fellow
deserves a vast amount of consideration. Yet
the colonel treated him with absolute rudeness,
interrupted him, talked through him in a
tone of voice with which it was impossible to
compete; elbowed him, in short, out of the
conversation. Well, sir, I assure you that young
Pettiford has gone through examinations, which
would have gravelled the colonel in five minutes;
he has acquired information on a variety of
points concerning which the colonel is grossly
ignorant. Besides this, he has passed, and is
passing, his young days in a wholesome and useful
manner. He has a great deal of sound sense
and discretion, and would shrink from many an
act of folly that some of his elders would fall
into.

Sir, the young men of this day are a peculiar
race, and deserve a little study, though
you may not think it. The new system of
education is beginning to tell. A race of
men—-though you and the colonel call them
"boys"—-has grown up under that new system,
and an estimate can now to some extent be
formed of its results. The reduction of
coercion to a minimum, the utmost accordance
of liberty that could reasonably be granted,
the treatment of boys as rational creatures
deserving of consideration and capable of detecting
injustice and wrong—-all these are new features
in an educational plan, entirely modern, and
entirely opposed to the views on education
which obtained even during the earlier portion
of the present century. There is no end to the
advantages which have been gained by this great
change in one of the most important parts of a
nation's economy. The young men of the day
are no longer like hounds held in leash, ready
to tear off to the world's end when the
restraints are removed at last—-as, remember, at
last, they always must be. "The brisk minor" no
longer "pants for twenty-one;" because, when
"twenty-one" arrives, he will act very much as
he did at eighteen. His youth has not been one
of restraint and coercion. Human life is not an
unknown but fascinating mystery to him, which
hitherto he has been forbidden to look into, but
which now he is suddenly at liberty to explore.
Oh, sir, it was a great mistake, that old plan of
shutting up as long as you could, what it was
not yours to shut up for ever. You used to keep
the flood-gates closed till the very last moment.
You kept a mighty and ever-rebelling force pent
up within them as long as the thing was possible,
and when it was no longer possible, and you
were obliged to fling them wide, Heavens! what
a bursting forth there was, what a roaring and
rushing of waters, and, alas! too often, what
devastation and laying waste!

We go all the other way now. Let in the
light, is our cry, let in the light. Never accord
to evil, the tremendous advantage which it gains
in being surrounded by mystery. In so far as it
is possible, and in accordance with common
sense, let there be liberty in all things, and
knowledge of all things.

Upon the whole, then, it does seem as if the
young men of the present day reached years of
discretion, and became men, earlier than in the
past day, and I think they conceive a little
differently of that quality of manliness, and form a
different estimate of its component parts from
that which used to be formed by their
grandfathers. Dissipation and swearing and wild
practical jokes, often of a very cruel and inhuman
sort, are no longer considered to be important
ingredients in forming the manly character. Any
persons who might happen in these days to be
addicted to such practices would be regarded
—-not with wonder and awe as "first-rate
Corinthians," but might, on the contrary, run
a considerable risk of being treated with
contempt and aversion, and set down as
"unmitigated blackguards."

And yet, let no one run away with the
impression that such a youngster as I am speaking
of—-such an one as may be taken as a fair
specimen of the best modern type of young man—-
is in the slightest degree open to the charge
of being a "milksop," though I can fancy your
friend, the colonel, being exceedingly ready to
prefer it against him. Very far from that; he
is able and willing to do anything that becomes
a man. Our present educational system turns
out a number of young men, sound in body and
rational in mind. As to the rising men who are
to set the Thames on fire, that is another matter.
You cannot so educate a youth as to make him a
genius: any more than you can, by any system
yet discovered, arrest the propagation of blockheads.

I have set before you, my worthy parent, a
good specimen of the youth of the day; but I
should be very sorry to assert that there are
no bad specimens, or that even the good are
without defects. I can view this subject
dispassionately. I belong to this period, but I am
not wedded to it. I am one of the new generation,
though not of the last batch; I can see
the defects of the new generation. Let me
initiate you, dear sir, if it is only to show my
impartiality.

It seems to me, from what I have heard, and
read, and observed, that with every passing year
men get to have less of individuality than they
used to have, and this characteristic of the day
appears to affect the rising generation in an
almost inconceivable degree. In the good and
the bad that is in them, they are marvellously
like each other, and cut out to a pattern. They
all dress alike to a button—-nay, to the fastening
or unfastening of a button; not a plait of
their shirt-fronts in the evening, not a fold
of their neckerchiefs in the morning, gives
the slightest, indication of freedom of thought.
These young fellows talk alike, moreover, using
the same words, thinking the same thoughts,
expressing them, tant bien que mal, in the same
slang. They all have the same tastes. They
frequent race-courses in the proper race-costume