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

92 Crabbed Age and Youth
All our attributes are modified or changed ;
and it will be a poor account of us if our
views do not modify and change in a propor-
tion. To hold the same views at forty as
we held at twenty is to have been stupefied
for a score of years, and take rank, not as a
prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well
birched and none the wiser. It is as if a
ship captain should sail to India from the
Port of London ; and having brought a chart
of the Thames on deck at his first setting
out, should obstinately use no other for the
whole voyage.
And mark you, it would be no less foolish
to begin at Gravesend with a chart of the
Red Sea. Si Jeunesse savait, si Vieillcsse
potivait, is a very pretty sentiment, but not
necessarily right. In five cases out of ten,
it is not so much that the young people do
not know, as that they do not choose. There
is something irreverent in the speculation,
but perhaps the want of power has more to
do with the wise resolutions of age than we
are always willing to admit. It would be