Boys—worthy to be called Boys—are naturally brave. There is not, so far as we are aware, any etymological connexion between the words _boy_ and _brave_; but there _is_ an association of ideas, which if it does not make the terms interchangeable, is still strongly suggestive of their being one and the same. The expression _brave_ man is easily understood, but to us, _brave_ BOY looks like a pleonasm. A man has experience. He has tested—if there be any good thing in him—his courage in the rough exploits of the world’s campaign. He has tilted, mayhap, with Quixotic chivalry against windmills, and in the encounter has been discomfited; he has awakened from his bright dream to a sad reality; he has been tempted to turn prosaic—inclined sometimes to beat his sword into a sickle, to gather in for his own special use the golden wheat from _anybody’s_ cornfield, and to make those late foes of his—the windmills—grind up the corn to make _his_ bread. Now he is no longer brave. His views of life are taken from a new point of sight. He smiles at the _boy’s_ enthusiasm, and counts himself wise in his _man’s_ selfishness. But a man who has done battle, who has been thrown in the lists, who has been ready to mount and splinter lance again, who in the gaining of experience has lost nothing of the Boy’s boldness—such a man is _brave_. The drift of these remarks is that experience may ruin a Boy’s “pluck”—may give him the vulpine sagacity of Reynard in place of the courage of Leo Africanus. But a Boy is brave. Youth is the season of confidence. “Your _young_ men shall _see visions_” while our “_old_ men shall dream dreams.” What visions are those which rise up before the young—what brave words to speak, what brave actions to do—how bravely—if need be—to suffer! “The young fellows,” said an old soldier to the writer, “are always pushing forward in a battle charge—they are in a mighty hurry to smell powder—_the veterans fall into the rear_!” Do they?—ah, well, ’tis the lesson, perhaps of experience! But is it better than the Boy’s eagerness to be foremost?—is it not—answer brave hearts—better to die planting the colours on the wall, than to share the spoil which others have won?