This may be called 'unpractical;' but we cannot help thinking that if parents would sometimes reflect on such ideals, they would have less of false and more of true ambition than they now have. They would wish their children to turn out useful rather than brilliant, good rather than clever. As it is, a dull child is too often snubbed and rendered miserable because he does not give promise of shining in the world; while his precocious brother, who will probably do far less (precocious brains being often the worst), is lionised to strangers, and regarded as a sort of Liebig's Essence for the support of the family. Perhaps it is owing to this association of early ideas that at school the clever boy who spends the shortest time possible at his books is considered by his companions a far greater man than his less clever class-fellow who wins in the long-run by working more conscientiously.
How much unhappiness then might children be spared if their parents would goad them less and sometimes cheer up that dullness which has fallen to the lot of most of us, by saying:
Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things—nor dream them all day long;
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever,
One grand sweet song.
If now we allow our thoughts to pass on from childhood to youth, we shall find that in the case of many young men the choice of a profession is attended with much anxiety and no little misery. Some there are who take kindly to the profession which their friends advise or which is cut out for them by circumstances. There is, however, a class of young men for whom we have much sympathy, who find it very difficult to get started in life, because they have no strong inclination or pre-arranged reason which would induce them to choose one profession rather than another. These are speculative rather than practical men, who are better adapted for taking college honours than for the struggle for existence. They do not wish to enter the clerical profession; they may not have sufficient money to enable them to live through the winter of discontented brieflessness at the bar; their tastes and nerves are not such as would qualify them for the medical profession; they may have no business connection. At last they begin to fancy that they are de trop in the world, and come to the very erroneous conclusion that mankind has no need for their service.
To such we would say: Go into the profession you dislike least, and habit will make it bearable. Remember that patience and conscientious plodding, though sneered at by shallow young men, are the highest virtues and synonymous with true genius. Life is too short to make ourselves miserable over the choice of a profession, or to spend years speculating about what is best to do, which would be better employed in doing it. We must not seek for mathematical demonstration that the road we propose to travel on is the right one, when we come to cross-roads in life. A certain amount of probability is sufficient to make us take either, especially if the wolf of Hunger be at our heels, or the nobler incentive of a desire to be useful to our fellow-creatures is urging us.
In the choice of a profession, as of a wife, there must be a certain venture of faith, and in this unintelligible world there is a rashness which is not always folly. Young men cannot always adapt circumstances to themselves, let them therefore endeavour to mould themselves to circumstances.
Medical men tell us that at every great physiological change in our systems the mind is apt to be for some time greatly out of tune. Now this is especially the case when boys and girls are becoming youths and maidens, and should not be overlooked when considering the sorrows of youth. At this period they see everything as it were upside down, and are sometimes tormented by strange fancies, which will vanish when the tissues of their flesh and of their characters become firmer. Mr Carlyle says that young men should be shut up in barrels and kept somewhere out of sight until they have passed their twenty-fifth year, because it is about this time that they 'attain to their maximum of detestability.' Now we are quite sure that this was not said in a cynical tone, for Mr Carlyle values the freshness and enthusiasm of youth, as every great man must. And indeed it must be acknowledged that some young men do make themselves very objectionable when they speak and act, as though they fancied that nothing half so valuable as themselves had ever been produced on this earth before.
Is it not probable, however, that young people would better attend to the lessons which their elders can teach them if these elders had more sympathy for their peculiar trials and sorrows, and were willing to consider the originality and fire of youth as little less indispensable to the movement of society, than is steam to the locomotion of a railway engine? Youth may make itself absurd, but it does not always become every old man to rebuke it. The old should not speak disparagingly of 'inexperienced young men,' unless they themselves make use of the experience they possess. One of the Earls of Chatham was once taunted on account of his youth, and his reply was: 'Sir—The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not, sir, assume the province of determining; but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided.'
We conclude these few random notes by saying that people should try to be the friends and companions as well as the parents of their children; for if true friends do not win their confidence, false ones will. Nothing is more difficult than to understand a thoughtful child; but if once you do so, you can bring him up in the way he should go. Do not solve your child's nature or anything else too quickly, for 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' or in mine, or in any man's. Certainly childhood ought to be the happiest period of life; but it greatly depends on the sympathy of parents whether it is so or not.