If we thus discern in the sentiments and faculties of youth the animating and impelling soul of historical events,--if, wherever in history we mark a great movement of humanity, we commonly detect a young man at its head or at its heart,--we must still, I admit, discriminate between youth and young men, between the genial action of youthful qualities and the imperfections and perversions of youthful character. Youth we commonly represent under the image of morn,--clear, fresh, cheerful, radiant, the green sward trembling and gleaming with ecstasy as the rising sun transfigures its dew-drops into diamonds; but then morn is sometimes black with clouds, and foul with vapors, and terrible with tempests. In treating, therefore, of the position and influence of young men in history, let us begin with those in whom the energies of youth were early perverted from their appropriate objects, and fell under the dominion of sensual appetites or malignant passions.
And first, it is important we should bear in mind, that, in this misdirection of youth, all that constitutes the spirit, the power, the charm of youth is extinguished. The young man becomes prematurely old. We have all witnessed that saddest of spectacles, the petulant child developing into the ruffian boy, and hurrying into the ruffian man,--rude, hard-natured, swaggering, and self-willed, a darkness over his conscience, a glare over his appetites, insensible to duty or affection, and only tamed into decencies by the chains of restraint which an outraged community binds on his impulses. Now give this young savage arbitrary power, let him inherit the empire of the world, remove all restraints on his will, and allow him to riot in the mad caprices of sensuality and malevolence, and he makes his ominous appearance in history as a Caligula, a Domitian, a Nero. More fit for a madhouse than a throne, his advent is the signal of a despotism controlled by no guiding principles, but given over to that spirit of freak and mischief which springs from the union of the boy's brain with the man's appetites; and his fate is to have that craze of the faculties and delirium of the sensations which he calls his life abruptly closed by suicide or assassination: by suicide, when he has become intolerable to himself; by assassination, when, as is more common, he has become intolerable to the world. Evil, however, as history shows him, it must still be said that his career does not exhibit the consistent depravity and systematic wickedness which characterize some of the Roman Emperors of maturer years; and even the giddy ferocities of the youthful Nero can be contemplated with less horror than the Satanic depth of malignity which morosely brooded over shadowy plans of gigantic crime in the dark spirit of the aged Tiberius.