"It is singular the charm that youth flings over both its exaggeration and its selfishness — perhaps they are pardoned for their very unconsciousness. Its expectations are unreasonable; but they are entertained in such good faith, that we first envy and then excuse the state of mind which admits them, and forgive their present folly, from our conviction of their coming disappointment. It is our own sense of superiority — the conscious superiority of knowledge, dear bought by experience, that makes us thus charitable. In youth, too, selfishness is divested of its most obnoxious part — its calculation ; it seems thoughtlessness— again we pity, pardon, and fancy that amendment which never comes."