keep a whole Satanic school in the soul from spouting aloud. What says the benign Uhland?
“If our first lays too piteous have been,
And you have feared our tears would never cease,
If we too gloomily life’s prose have seen,
Nor suffered Man nor Mouse to dwell in peace,
Yet pardon us for our youth’s take. The vine
Must weep from her crushed grapes the generous wine;
Not without pain the precious beverage flows;
Thus joy and power may yet spring from the woes
Which have so wearied every long-tasked ear;” &c.
There is no getting rid of the epidemic of the season, however annoying and useless it may seem. You cannot cough down an influenza; it will cough you down.
Why young people will just now profess themselves so very miserable, for no better reason than that assigned by the poet to some “inquiring friends,”
“Nought do I mourn I e’er possessed,
I grieve that I cannot be blessed;”
I have here no room to explain. Enough that there has for some time prevailed a sickliness of feeling, whose highest water-mark may be found in the writings of Byron. He is the “power man” (as the Germans call him, meaning perhaps the power-loom!) who has woven into one tissue all those myriad threads, tear-stained and dull-gray, with which the malignant spiders of speculation had filled the machine shop of society, and by so doing has, though I admit, unintentionally, conferred benefits upon us incalculable for a long time to come. He has lived through this experience for us, and shown us that the natural fruits of indulgence in such a temper are dissonance, cynicism, irritability, and all uncharitableness. Accordingly, since his time the evil has lessened. With this warning before them, let the young examine
