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HE man who, in his progress through life, has listened with attention to the conversation of human beings; who has carefully read the writings of the best English authors; who has made himself well acquainted with the history and usages of his native land; and who has meditated much on all he has seen and read ; must have been led to the firm conviction that by VEAL, those who speak the English language intend to denote the flesh of calves; and that by a calf is intended an immature ox or cow. A calf is a creature in a temporary and progressive stage of its being. It will not always be a calf; if it live long enough, it will assuredly cease to be a calf. arresting the creature at that it to the hands of him whose

And if impatient man, stage, should consign business it is to con

vert the sentient animal into the impassive and unconscious meat, the nutriment which the creature will afford will be nothing more than immature beef. There may be many qualities of Veal; the calf which yields it may die at very different stages in its physical and moral development; but provided only it die as a calf-provided only that its meat can fitly be styled Veal-this will be characteristic of it, that the meat shall be immature meat. It may be very good, very nutritious and palatable; some people may like it better than beef, and may feed upon it with the liveliest satisfaction; but when it is fairly and deliberately put to us, it must be admitted even by such as like Veal the best, that Veal is but an immature production of nature. I take Veal, therefore, as the emblem of IMMATURITY; of that which is now in a stage out of which it must grow; of that which, as time goes on, will grow older, will probably grow better, will certainly grow very different. That is what I mean by Veal.

And now, my reader and friend, you will discern the subject about which I trust we are to have some pleasant and not unprofitable thought together. You will readily believe that my subject is not that material Veal which may be beheld and purchased in the butchers' shops. I am not now to treat of its varied qualities, of the sustenance which it yields, of the price at which it may be procured, or of the laws according to which that price rises and falls.

I am not going to take you to the green fields in which the creature which yielded the veal was fed, or to discourse of the blossoming hawthorn hedges from whose midst it was reft away. Neither shall I speak of the rustic life, the toils, cares, and fancies of the farm-house near which it spent its brief lifetime. The Veal of which I intend to speak is Moral Veal, or (to speak with entire accuracy), Veal Intellectual, Moral, and Esthetical. By Veal I understand the immature productions of the human mind; immature compositions, immature opinions, feelings, and tastes. I wish to think of the work, the views, the fancies, the emotions, which are yielded by the human soul in its immature stages; while the calf (so to speak) is only growing into the ox; while the clever boy, with his absurd opinions and feverish feelings and fancies, is developing into the mature and sober-minded man. And if I could

but rightly set out the thoughts which have at many different times occurred to me on this matter, if one could catch and fix the vague glimpses and passing intuitions of solid unchanging truth, if the subject on which one has thought long and felt deeply were always that on which one could write best, and could bring out to the sympathy of others what a man himself has felt, what an excellent essay this would be! But it will not be so; for as I try to grasp the thoughts I would set out, they melt away and elude me. It is like trying to catch and

keep the rainbow hues you have seen the sunshine cast upon the spray of a waterfall, when you try to catch the tone, the thoughts, the feelings, the atmosphere of early youth.

There can be no question at all as to the fact, that clever young men and women, when their minds begin to open, when they begin to think for themselves, do pass through a stage of mental development which they by-and-bye quite outgrow; and entertain opinions and beliefs, and feel emotions, on which afterwards they look back with no sympathy or approval. This is a fact as certain as that a calf grows into an ox, or that veal, if spared to grow, will become beef. But no analogy between the material and the moral must be pushed too far. There are points of difference between material and moral Veal. A calf knows it is a calf. It may think itself bigger and wiser than an ox, but it knows it is not an ox. And if it be a reasonable calf, modest, and free from prejudice, it is well aware that the joints it will yield after its demise, will be very different from those of the stately and wellconsolidated ox which ruminates in the rich pasture near it. But the human boy often thinks he is a man, and even more than a man. He fancies that his mental stature is as big and as solid as it will ever become. He fancies that his mental productions-the poems and essays he writes, the political

and social views he forms, the moods of feeling with which he regards things-are just what they may always be, just what they ought always to be. If spared in this world, and if he be one of those whom years make wiser, the day comes when he looks back with amazement and shame on those early mental productions. He discerns now how immature, absurd, and extravagant they were; in brief, how vealy. But at the time, he had not the least idea that they were so. He had entire confidence in himself; not a misgiving as to his own ability and wisdom. You, clever young student of eighteen years old, when you wrote your prize essay, fancied that in thought and style it was very like Macaulay; and not Macaulay in that stage of vealy brilliancy in which he wrote his essay on Milton, not Macaulay the fairest and most promising of calves, but Macaulay the stateliest and most beautiful of oxen. Well, read over your essay now at thirty, and tell us what you think of it. And you, clever, warmhearted, enthusiastic young preacher of twenty-four, wrote your sermon; it was very ingenious, very brilliant in style, and you never thought but that it would be felt by mature-minded Christian people as suiting their case, as true to their inmost experience. You could not see why you might not preach as well as a man of forty. And if people in middle. age had complained that, eloquent as your preaching was, they found it suited them better and profited

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