Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Crabbed Age and Youth 9 1
age than we begin to be another, and no
sooner in the fulness of our manhood than
we begin to decline towards the grave. It
is in vain to seek for consistency or expect
clear and stable views in a medium so per-
turbed and fleeting. This is no cabinet
science, in which things are tested to a
scruple ; we theorise with a pistol to our
head ; we are confronted with a new set of
conditions on which we have not only to
pass a judgment, but to take action, before
the hour is at an end. And we cannot even
regard ourselves as a constant ; in this flux
of things, our identity itself seems in a per-
petual variation ; and not infrequently we
find our own disguise the strangest in the
masquerade. In the course of time, we
grow to love things we hated and hate things
we loved. Milton is not so dull as he once
was, nor perhaps Ainsworth so amusing. It
is decidedly harder to climb trees, and not
nearly so hard to sit still. There is no use
pretending ; even the thrice royal game of
hide and seek has somehow lost in zest.