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

150 Ordered South
existence falls away, and we are dislodged
from one of these dear provinces ; and they
are not, perhaps, the most fortunate who
survive a long series of such impoverishments,
till their life and influence narrow gradually
into the meagre limit of their own spirits,
and death, when he comes at last, can destroy
them at one blow.
Note, — To this essay I must in honesty append a
word or two of quahfication ; for this is one of the
points on which a sHghtly greater age teaches us a
shghtly different wisdom :
A youth delights in generalities, and keeps loose
from particular obligations ; he jogs on the footpath
way, himself pursuing butterflies, but courteously
lending his applause to the advance of the human
species and the coming of the kingdom of justice and
love. As he grows older, he begins to think more
narrowly of man's action in the general, and perhaps
more arrogantly of his own in the particular. He
has not that same unspeakable trust in what he
would have done had he been spared, seeing finally
that that would have been little ; but he has a far
higher notion of the blank that he will make by
dying. A young man feels himself one too many in
the world ; his is a painful situation : he has no
calling ; no obvious utility ; no ties, but to his parents,
and these he is sure to disregard. I do not think