What, then, is that fraternity whose members are now denominated in a peculiar sense “the rising generation,” albeit no existing dictionary conveys it? How came they to assume or receive that cognomen? “What are their doings—what their ends?” And, finally (for this is _par excellence_ the practical, if not the golden English era), how much are all these worth? In one shape or another, we suspect that the class embraces a great mass of our youth, we will almost say, of _both_ sexes. Various definitions may be given of a member of the “rising generation.” The lowest, commonest, and most readily apprehensible to the general reader, is that of a “fast young man,” such as “Punch” has for some time spitted weekly as a laughing-stock for half of the population. A little, lean, lathy, sickly-looking youth, delighting in rough short coats, monkey jackets, regatta shirts, big cigars, funny walking-canes, the smallest of boots, the most angular of hats, the most Brobdignagian of ties—rejoicing in a thinly-sown mustache or imperial, addicted to brandy-and-water and casinos, going out with the “afternoon delivery,” and coming in with the milk. This is true so far as it goes. Ascend a step, and there is the representative of the class which has run to seed in the mediæval direction—fond of, and learned in, all the symbols of ancient priestly power and rank—steeped in black-letter and illuminated missal philosophy and theology—erudite in all the variations which spiritual dominance has assumed—in short, the resuscitator of the “good old times” ecclesiastical. Again, we come to the type of the chief, and perhaps the finest class—many-hued and many-sided, difficult to define, more difficult to estimate. He is a chaos of misty beliefs and dubious doubtings—a striver after theories which would exercise a spell over mind and matter of almost alchemic potency—an open receiver for every new and quackish nostrum—a shallow scholar, with the pedantry and conceit of a ripe one—a denier of other men’s attainments, without stopping to inquire whether he will ever be able to equal them—apt to give dogmatic advice, and slow to take any—lastly, and worst, he is sometimes a rash and unphilosophic would-be analyzer of the grounds of our most sacred belief. He may be—indeed, frequently is—of a genuine and earnest spirit, which he knows neither how to direct nor bound.