OUR MODERN YOUTH.

Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 99, 9 October 1863, Page 3

OUR MODERN YOUTH.

(Ftora IVas r's Magazine ) (Continued.) • . . ; . Youthful conceit is fostered in another way by much of the current literature of the day. Newspapers, reviews, magazines, railway publications, all bring a quantity of miscellaneous and hasty opinion before the public ; opinions on every variety of subjects and information .given out in an excathedra tone which masks its shallow^ ness. The young read indiscrimately, digest a small portion of this diluted knowledge, and imbibe in toto the easy spirit of decision. It would not be possible for them to form an opinion on a tenth ( part of the subjects thus brought before them, but they can easily retail opinions, and thus at once deceive themselves and gratify their vanity by having something to say when any of this miscellaneous hoard is turned up in society. It is a very wide and difficult question to strike the balance of good and evil produced by the mass of indifferent literature in the present day. So many important moral and social questioas -enter into the consideration that we could not venture an opinion here. But this we may assert; that when literature was of a different order it did not in the same manuer foster self-deception in those who studied it. In. the first place it required to be studied, it was addressed to mere cultivated minds. It was not so easy to gather from it opinions on half a dozen grave topics in the course of an hour's drive ; the trouble of forming opinions more slowly exercised the judgment of those who really want through the labor, and forced some dogree of modest silence on those who did not. In some measure the question of popular literature is a class question : that is, it must be judged on very different grounds according to the class we are considering. The cheapness and abundance of papers and books brings knowledge in some form or another within the reach of all ; this is the good, aud can hardly be over-rated. The evil scarcely touches the class who are most affected by the benefit. The poor man out of all this abundance probably gets one paper only to read, or one book which is slowly conned in his scanty leisure hours, and which cannot therefore present information in too easy a form. Multitudes are thus enabled to read, while each lias still but little variety in his reading. With the upper classes who have abundant leisure, the case is reversed, There each one can command the variety which is intended to meet the various tastes of the multitude of readers, The light popular form in which knowledge must be presented in order to be available for those who have small means or time for mental culture, just suffices to save trouble to '.-those who might give both time and attention, but are easily led to prefer the desultory, superficial gleanings of popular works, to the books requiring thought and labour, which their intellectual opportunities might piivilege them io study. Thus what is a substantial benefit to ene class becomes a snare to another. Again, if it is desired to cultivate a taste for reading as a refining habit oppos d to the coai>e pleasures which offer their ceaseless temptations to. the working man, we must have amusing books. Information, if aimed af, at all, must be in an attractive form, while fiction itself has noble uses in raising the ignorant mind used to the low and coarse tone of its own public, to know what is the standard of opinion and sentiment accepted among the more cultivated and gentler bred. Emotion and imagination are thereby excited, and heart and mind the better for it. The elevating influence of the drama may thus iv great measure be exercised without the accompanying evils of the stage, But iv a higher class of society this mode of influence should be unneeded ; and fiction sinks to the mere amusementof an idle hour. If those to whom the finest poetry of several languages is, or ought to be, accessible ; to whom the world's history and the record of what man's genius has don?, appeal in a thousand voices to stir thought and imagination 1 if they are still dependent for mental excitement on the commonplace fictions that swarm from our press, they deserve indeed our unfeigned compassion. But let us rather blame the education which has left them so intellectually poor, than deny praise to the efforts made to meet the needs of those who have had fewsr means to neglect and fewer opportunities to misuse. Another source of self-deception with the young is that reading is the fashion. It is' impossible to give it another name with the generality, when we see how entirely their reading is limited to what fashion prescribes, — to what "everybody is reading.'' It would be curious to examine the lists sent to Mudie'ss library during a period of some months, for the sake of discovering what proportion among these constant readers have any purpose of their own in their reading, a purpose which would show itself in selection and in consecutive study of some particular subject. We believe such an examinatiou would afford a startling revelation of the utter absence in general of any of the real purposes of reading. A new book comes out on China, or North America; the whole interest of the circulating library public is immediately concentrated on those countries ; the most valuable, nay the most amusing book, six months older in date, would not be looked at. Next week a theelogical work threatens to divide the church, or a philosophical speculation excites enough attention to become matter of general conversation ; immediately, every one, however incapable of following the argument or appreciating the research, must read that work and no other. The author *• might wish that his reader should give at

feast as many days' thought to the study of his work as. he :: gave .years to the com-? position of it, but little does he know the reading public if he indulges such ai hope, let him only rejoice when speedily a new novel or a new sermon comes out which it would be equally disgraceful not to be able to talk over at every; dinner table. When all other resource 1 fails and fashion is silent, the clerk at the library is desired to cater for the intellectual wants of these industrious readers, " he must send them something for they have nothing to read." Some of these starved supplicants for books have libraries at home, but the books are old enough to have been bound, and that we know puts them out of the readable class. No doubt some information is gleaned from this heterogeneous mass ; but while it is seldom such as to improve the understanding, it is always enough to feed self-sufficiency. How can we, how can they themselves doubt their knowledge, when they are so continually reading ; when many of them do not travel an hour or wait ten minutes at a shop door without a book ? None can doubt the fact of the reading, but apart from the nature of if, the very quantity might make us distrustful. Those, at any rate, who know how much mind and character owe to thought and meditation, will have their doubts whether this eschewing of apparent idleness is altogether a guage of mental profit. ; All the faults we have censured in the young of the present day, and which we ascribe partly to defective education, and partly to the desultory habits of reading, are also fostered very powerfully by the growth of democratic opinions. What that influence has been in this respect is shown in a yet stronger 1-ght by the example of America, where those opinions prevail more ent ; rilv, and where tne same condition of the young mind is seen in a more aggravated form. The parental rule is more relaxed than among ourselves, the spirit of independence and the arroiant tone more marked among the young. It is asserted that public opinion operates to narrow the exercise of the most legitimate authority to such a degree that the discipline neeesspry for education is almost abandoned, and a mother has been known to say that she dared not punish her child. Every youth feels that independence will soon be within his grasp and exults in the almost boundless field open to his energies. His ignorance and inexperience very naturally seem no obstacles, when the constitution of his country considers such drawbacks no impediment to the possession of the most serious political privileges, tiiils hitherto debarred from these, naturally look upon the exclusion as a wrong which excites again' the rebellious spirit ; or if not active-minded enough to care for these things, they are content with the wide career of social independence opened to them. They frequently go Out alone when even our fast uiie still no thiough the ceremouy of buying a chaperon, and marry at an age which almost insures their having neither knowledge .nor power to resist bein^ thrust again into the background by their own children.