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to youth; I have seen it appearing very strongly in men with gray hair. Another manifestation of Vealiness, which appears both in age and youth, is the entertaining a strong belief that kings, noblemen, and baronets are always in a condition of ecstatic happiness. I have known people pretty far advanced in life, who not only believed that monarchs must be perfectly happy, but that all who were permitted to continue in their presence would catch a considerable degree of the mysterious bliss which was their portion. I have heard a sane man, rather acute and clever in many things, seriously say, "If a man cannot be happy in the presence of his Sovereign, where can he be happy?"
And yet, absurd and foolish as is Moral Vealiness, there is something fine about it. Many of the old and dear associations most cherished in human hearts are of the nature of Veal. It is sad to think that most of the romance of life is unquestionably so. All spooniness, all the preposterous idolization of some one who is just like anybody else, all love, (in the narrow sense in which the word is understood by novel-readers,) you feel, when you look back, are Veal. The young lad and the young girl, whom at a picnic party you have discerned stealing off under frivolous pretexts from the main body of guests, and sitting on the grass by the river-side, enraptured in the prosecution of a conversation which is intellectually of the emptiest, and fancying that they two make all the world, and investing that spot with remembrances which will continue till they are gray, are (it must in sober sadness be admitted) of the nature of calves. For it is beyond doubt that they are at a stage which they will outgrow, and on which they may possibly look back with something of shame. All these things, beautiful as they are, are no more than Veal. Yet they are fitting and excellent in their time. No, let us not call them Veal; they are rather like Lamb, which is excellent, though immature. No doubt, youth is immaturity; and as you outgrow it, you are grow