to ourselves, what is the use of thinking, and fearing, and hoping? Our own individuality has nothing to do with the future in this world, and the future of the little ones is lost in mystery.'

We say it, yet still we find ourselves thinking and dreaming, loving and planning-how vainly! The generation more directly near to us are in a measure sharing our cares. We know fairly well what they may expect, and it is natural that we should look forward a few years for and with them; but the babies, the children whom we only see at rare intervals, what will they know of us? How little do we know ourselves of those whose shadows gather about our own childish memories! It is a sorrowful consciousness which comes over us. We can never be much more than shadows to these little ones. The old love the young, as the young can seldom or never love the old. Every smile and tear, the tones of the baby voice, the sadness of the childish heart, touch us, and continue to touch us, strangely. That is why grandparents are said as a rule to spoil their grandchildren. The distance of years brings with it the mystery of beauty and poetry. But why should we be such shadows? We long to be remembered, to be recognised as having assisted in moulding these fresh young lives. Why are we contented to let them remain so much in ignorance about us?.

The question has often occurred to me. I look back upon my own childhood and remember so many things, which, now that I can understand their significance, tend to throw light upon the history of my family, and in consequence on my own; but the circumstances surrounding them are obscure. Again and again I have said to myself, if I had only asked my mother more about herself, and her early life when she was with me, I should have been much more sympathetic and tender in my intercourse with her; and far greater interest would have been attached to my present surroundings.'

Books, pictures, engravings, china ornaments have come into my -possession, and that of my sisters-but en masse. There were separate stories attached to them once, but they are all for the most part forgotten. The joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears of precious lives have been attached to them; many probably could tell a tale of gratitude, others were the visible symbols of affection; a few possibly are the witnesses to hopes which, when disappointed, wrecked the happiness of a life; but they are all nothing now. If it happened to be expedient the young generation would put them without thought into the auction mart, to be valued simply according to the fashionable value of the hour. And perhaps it is well that it should be so. If we attached too much romance to our possessions we might only multiply the ties already too numerous which bind us to earth; but as a matter of interest there can be no doubt that we have lost much by our ignorance of the past, and that the present young generation are likely to lose more, for the rush of life is now so great that it leaves little or no time for the elders of a family to recall their own

experiences, or to hand them down to those who are to come after them. And this absence of continuity, if it may be so called-this blank between the lives of grandfathers and great-grandfathers and their direct descendants, must tell more seriously in another way. It certainly must tend to encourage in the young the concentration of thought upon self. When the past is hidden from us, or seen only through a mist, we naturally fix our imagination on the present or the future, in which we may ourselves take part. The traditions of old historic families unquestionably tell upon the living branches; but in ordinary cases, when there are no special traditions, the young energetic mind devotes itself to the formation of its own career, whilst the mind which is not energetic lives simply for the day, carelessly floating down the stream of Time to the great Lethean river, in which such countless memories have been lost.

With this tone of mind reverence naturally diminishes, and with reverence respect-a more visibly useful quality than reverence in this working world, and therefore more generally valued.

We old people feel this very keenly. When at seventy we are addressed by a girl or boy of seventeen in the familiar tone of absolute equality, we shrink back, jarred. Yet the young people mean no harm. They only follow the instinct of their age, which tells them that the world is for the young who have life before them, that they have made a fresh starting-point for themselves, and that the link with the past, though it cannot be broken, need not be recognised, except as a matter of historical or antiquarian interest.

I think the impulse of the old is to stand aside when this kind of self-assertion comes before them. They have not the strength to contend with it, neither have they always the inclination, for the secret of what is termed 'progress' is to be found in it. Yet personally, it is offensive, and if so, there must be something in it to be condemned. What is this something?

Looking back on one's own life often helps one to unravel the problems of the present hour. For we who now are old were once young, self-asserting and progressive. We can all, I suppose, remember the spirit in which we dealt with our elders, and few of us, I fancy, can ponder on such memories without self-reproach.

How self-opinionated we were! How little we understood the reason of the commands laid upon us! How we fretted against restrictions! How quietly we put aside the opinion of our elders, as being not in accord with the needs of the rising generation! And how very selfish we were in our interests! How little we comprehended the sorrows, the anxieties, and disappointments of our parents and elder relations! Even when years have given us experience of trial, it is probably not till late in life that we really begin to understand what those who preceded us had in their day to bear.

I remember in my own case, an allusion which my mother used occasionally to make to a sore trouble in her life, but which for years

I scarcely attended to. It was connected with events so far in the past-I seemed to have no concern with it; but it haunted her to her dying day. In her last hours she spoke of it to me again, and more fully. I understood it better then, and the fact that at such a time it should recur, struck me forcibly; yet it was not till years after that I realised all which it had involved, or could estimate the purity and nobility of character which had enabled her to go through the trial bravely as she did. This want of mutual comprehension between the old and the young is often perceived, but generally speaking, it is accepted as unavoidable. We did not understand or sympathise with our elders, and now the young do not sympathise with us, and we say to ourselves, it is part of the discipline of life.

Yes, it is discipline, but I think it might be softened; a good deal might probably be done to bring the young into communion of spirit with the old, and thus to encourage respect, if not reverence, by some attempt on our part to awaken their interest in bygone days. So often now I wish I had heard more of the trials of the elder members of my own family! So often I desire to know the history of certain individuals, and to understand how certain events, which have intimately affected my own life, had their rise! But it was not the custom in my early days, and I do not think it is the custom now, for the old to take the young into their confidence, or for the young especially to seek for it. It might be better for both parties if it were. We, the old, are too apt to take it for granted that the young know what they are entirely ignorant of, and then we are vexed with them for not being more grateful or more thoughtful about us. Why do we not tell them if possible what it is which has brought a burden upon us, which perhaps prematurely silvered our hair, and diminished our strength, or which has made us tremble, and be afraid at circumstances which in themselves seem to be of no importance.

The Past is always more or less a romance, even to ourselves, and certainly it will be so to the generation who have no personal knowledge of it. Journals, reminiscences, autobiographies, are attractive even to outsiders, and who can care so much for them as those who inherit the results of the events narrated in them? Did any one ever take up a great-grandfather's journal, or even diary, without dwelling with a riveted attention upon the most common details? They bring those almost historical times into intimate association with our own; and when the events are not so far past, when they only go back to days in which our infancy had a share, the interest awakened is of a more personal, and it may even be called a more sacred, character.

We have ourselves suffered or profited by the daily life which is portrayed so unconsciously. It is, in fact, a portion of our own life, and even in that selfish view, it is of importance, for the continuity of family life is a great element in the formation of character. The fact that ancestral worship is the main element in the religion of a

large portion of the human race, points to a similar conclusion. Though in itself a miserable superstition, it is undoubtedly founded upon a natural instinct. Race and family are great mysteries. Abstract entities, shall we call them, or ideas? It is a metaphysical question which we may well leave to the controversies of philosophers. They are, that is all we can say, and we have to take them into account in our own self-discipline, and in the training of others committed to our care; and so I have come to the conclusion in my own mind that it is the duty of the old, and the wisdom of the young, to make family history, so far as is possible, a matter of information to the new generation. It is only by acquaintance with the Past that we can learn to respect its efforts, and sympathise with its difficulties; and respect and sympathy are essential elements in right Conservatism.

I shrink from using a political, abused, and misunderstood term, and yet there is no other word that so clearly expresses the spirit which must be cultivated if a check is to be placed upon the headlong rush of the present day. Respect for the days gone by does not in the least preclude an acknowledgment of the errors and shortcomings connected with them; rather it brings these out more fully as we contrast them with the improvements and advantages of our own times. The story of imperfect desultory instruction which we, elders, have to relate to the children, who listen to it with such eager amusement, rests in their minds more lastingly than any warning words which we might use to impress upon them gravely how much better off they are. And sometimes perhaps it may give them all--especially the girls-a lesson in humility. If mothers and aunts know nothing of mathematics and algebra; if grandmothers and great-aunts learned by rote without explanation; if no one in those dark days had lectures from professors, or prepared for Oxford and Cambridge Examinations; whilst the idea of competing with university students would have been deemed the height of presumption; and if nevertheless hundreds of these ignorant progenitors and relatives grew up to be sensible, estimable women, thoroughly fulfilling their home duties, and so well-informed as to the spread of science and literature that they laid the foundation of a wider and deeper instruction for the young who have succeeded them; perhaps at all events, the question can scarcely fail to be suggested to thoughtful minds-perhaps there may be something worthy of ambition beyond the honour of a Girton scholarship, or the attainment of a University degree; perhaps these high distinctions are only means to an end; perhaps the unenlightened parents and teachers of sixty or seventy years ago managed to attain the desired end by different means. They may have travelled by the stage coach, whilst the present generation travel by railway; but the place of destination may have been reached by all.

But what destination? That is a very important inquiry. I

would rather answer it on another occasion. To enter upon it now would be to wander from the subject with which I started. These stories of former educational experiences are only some amongst the many topics which, when pleasantly touched upon, help to form a link between ourselves and the little ones to whom we are striving to make ourselves more than shadows.

Manners, customs, anecdotes of persons of note with whom we may happen to have been acquainted, and especially personal reminiscences connected with historical events, are full of attraction. It has only lately dawned upon me that to speak of the Crimean War to my little great-niece, will be likely to have the same effect upon her mind, half of romance, and half of awe, as the account of the dread of a French invasion in the days of the first Napoleon had upon myself, when my mother told me of her friends burying their silver in their gardens, whilst she herself was sent for safety to a relation living at Twyford, near Winchester; and, on the Sunday after her arrival, the clergymen addressed the congregation, and informed them that carts were in readiness to convey the women and children farther into the interior, because it was not deemed safe for them to remain so near the coast.

And there are domestic histories also relating to the generation absolutely gone by, which will keenly enlist the sympathies of the children. The trials of our own lives may be too nearly connected with the lives of those next in succession to be touched upon with the little ones of the third generation. We may not venture to tell them the tale of misunderstanding and separation, or explain the differences of character which belong to our own day;. but the long past sorrows, which, with all their surroundings, are buried in the graves of our parents and grandparents, form a tale of experience, having the intense interest of truth, whilst it is adorned with the vivid colouring, sometimes supposed to belong only to fiction.

Once let these pass into oblivion and they can never be recalled. There is a picture in my own possession, the likeness of a member of my family in bygone days, which I never look at without a sense of regret that I know nothing about the individual whom it represents. It came to us with several others from a great-uncle. My father and mother doubtless knew whom it represents; but they never thought of telling us. It used to hang on the wall of the great-uncle's house; but I was a mere child when this uncle died, and never saw it there, and when it came into our own hands, I never asked any questions about it. It has no tale to tell except that it has some marked family features. And there is another-the old blue gentleman, as we sometimes call him-equally distinctive in his features, and belonging evidently to my mother's family; but he also is all but a blank. He has no name, no definite history; we only say he must have been so-and-so. His portrait might be sold at the auction mart, and no one