As for youth,—­ah, who shall be brave enough, who has ever been brave enough, to defend the rising generation?  Who has ever looked with content upon the young, save only Plato, and he lived in an age of symmetry and order which we can hardly hope to reproduce.  The shortcomings of youth are so pitilessly, so glaringly apparent.  Not a rag to cover them from the discerning eye.  And what a veil has fallen between us and the years of our offending.  There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.  How loud and shrill the voice of the girl at our elbow.  How soft the voice which from the far past breathes its gentle echo in our ears.  How bouncing the vigorous young creatures who surround us, treading us under foot in the certainty of their self-assurance.  How sweet and reasonable the pale shadows who smile—­we think appealingly—­from some dim corner of our memories.  There is a passage in the diary of Louisa Gurney, a carefully reared little Quaker girl of good family and estate, which is dated 1796, and which runs thus:—­

“I was in a very playing mood to-day, and thoroughly enjoyed being foolish, and tried to be as rude to everybody as I could.  We went on the highroad for the purpose of being rude to the folks that passed.  I do think being rude is most pleasant sometimes.”

Let us hope that the grown-up Louisa Gurney, whenever she felt disposed to cavil at the imperfections of the rising generation of 1840 or 1850, re-read these illuminating words, and softened her judgment accordingly.

New York has been called the most insolent city in the world.  To make or to refute such a statement implies so wide a knowledge of contrasted civilizations that to most of us the words have no significance.  It is true that certain communities have earned for themselves in the course of centuries an unenviable reputation for discourtesy.  The Italians say “as rude as a Florentine”; and even the casual tourist (presuming his standard of manners to have been set by Italy) is disposed to echo the reproach.  The Roman, with the civilization of the world at his back, is naturally, one might say inevitably, polite.  His is that serious and simple dignity which befits his high inheritance.  But the Venetian and the Sienese have also a grave courtesy of bearing, compared with which the manners of the Florentine seem needlessly abrupt.  We can no more account for this than we can account for the churlishness of the Vaudois, who is always at some pains to be rude, and the gentleness of his neighbour, the Valaisan, to whom breeding is a birthright, born, it would seem, of generosity of heart, and a scorn of ignoble things.