It is the habit to applaud Young America--to magnify the superior wisdom and efficiency of young men, to treat old age familiarly, and to compel those of superior years to ignore the honors with which God has crowned them. "Every dog has his day," we say, and we are impatient of a man who declines to step into retirement the moment that his hair turns gray, to make room for some specimen of Young America with a snub nose and a smart shirt-collar. Now, however this irreverence may be justified--and it is not only justified but shamelessly gloried in--it is not poetical. Poetry cannot be woven of improprieties. A people bowing with reverence to those in authority, and regarding with profound respect high official station; a family of children clinging, even through a long manhood and womanhood, around the form of an aged parent with assiduous attentions and tender reverence; a community or a nation of young men looking to age for wisdom and for counsel; universal respect for years on the part of the young--these are, and must forever remain, poetical. Out of reverence can be woven the most beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can conceive; but Young America can no more excite poetic sentiment, or inspire poetic imaginations, than the sham Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse it drives. There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will not stand the poetic test. Americans boast habitually of their country, and their boastings always assume the poetic form. The ballot-box that they talk about is the ballot-box that ought to be and not the ballot-box that is. One would think, to hear what is said of the ballot-box, that it literally shines with glory, so that every American freeman who marches up to it to deposit the paper embodiment of his will, glows like a God in its light, and grows godlike by his act. If we are to believe Mr. Whittier, the poor voter sings on election day: "The proudest now is but my peer, The highest not more high; To-day, of all the weary year, A king of men am I. To-day, alike are great and small, The nameless and the known; My palace is the people's hall, The ballot-box my throne!" This is a very splendid sort of a ballot-box, and he is a very fine sort of an American who sings about it; but what are the facts? There are a good many chances that the box stands in a corner grocery, and that the poor voter is led up to deposit his priceless ballot so drunk that he cannot walk without help. Mr. Whittier would have us believe that the poor voter sings: "To-day shall simple manhood try The strength of gold and land; The wide world has not wealth to buy The power in my right hand."