INTRODUCTION.

TH

HERE is a charm in opening manhood which has commended itself to the imagination in every age. The undefined hopes and promises of the future—the dawning strength of intellect—the vigorous flow of passion-the very exchange of home ties and protected joys for free and manly pleasures, give to this period an interest and excitement unfelt, perhaps, at any other. It is the beginning of life in the sense of independent and self-supporting action. Hitherto life has been to boys, as to girls, a derivative and dependent existence-a sucker from the parent growth—a home discipline of authority and guidance and communicated impulse. But henceforth it is a transplanted growth of its own-a new and free power of activity, in which the mainspring is no longer authority or law from without, but principle or Opinion from within. The shoot which has been nourished under the shelter of the parent stem, and bent according to its inclination, is transferred to the open world, where of its own im

pulse and character it must take root, and grow into strength, or sink into weakness and vice.

There is a natural pleasure in such a change. The sense of freedom is always joyful, at least at first. The mere consciousness of awakening powers and prospective work touches with elation the youthful breast.

But to every right-hearted youth this time must be also one of severe trial. Anxiety must greatly dash its pleasure. There must be regrets behind, and uncertainties before. The thought of home must excite a pang even in the first moments of freedom. Its glad shelter-its kindly guidance-its very restraints, how dear and tender must they seem in parting! How brightly must they shine in the retrospect as the youth turns from them to the hardened and unfamiliar face of the world! With what a sweet, sadly-cheering pathos must they linger in the memory! And then what chance and hazard is there in his newly-gotten freedom! What instincts of warning in its very novelty and dim inexperience! What possibilities of failure as well as of success in the unknown future as it stretches before him!

Serious thoughts like these more frequently underlie the careless neglect of youth than is supposed. They do not show themselves, or seldom do; but they work deeply and quietly.