YOUTH.

MANHOOD.

MIDDLE LIFE.

AGE.

CHILDHOOD.

TWO PATHIS IN LIFE.

THESE contrasted pictures fur-
nish texts for a whole volume
of sermons upon human life and
destiny. The CHILD stands at the
parting of the ways, and he may
run through in succession all the
phases depicted in either series of
portraits. The essential elements
of either course of development lie
alike in those smooth features.
Which shall be actually realized
depends mainly upon the influ-
ences brought to bear upon him
from without. A few years of
training in our schools upon the
one hand, or in the streets upon
the other, will make all the differ-
ence, in the YOUTH, between the
characters that stand opposed to
each other in these opposite pic-
tures. A youth of study and train-
ing in a few years moulds the line-
aments of the face into the resem-
blance of the first picture of MAN-
HOOD; while, by a law equally in-
evitable, idleness and dissipation
bring out all the lower animal fac-
ulties, which reveal themselves in
the depressed forehead, the hard
eyebrow, the coarse mouth, and
the thickened neck of the oppo-
site picture. The short-boy, and
rowdy, and blackleg, if he escapes
the state prison and the gallows,
passes, as he reaches the confines
of MIDDLE AGE, into the drunken
loafer, sneaking around the grog-
shop in the chance of securing a
treat from some one who knew
him in his flush days; while he
who has chosen the other path, as
he passes the "mid journey of
life," and slowly descends the
slope toward AGE, grows daily
richer in the love and esteem of
those around him; and in the bo-
som of the family that gather about
his hearth, lives over again his
happy youth and earnest man-
hood. What a different picture is
presented in the fate of him who
has chosen the returnless down-
ward path, another and almost the
last stage of which is portrayed in
the companion sketch of AGE.
The shadows deepen as he de-
scends the hill of life. He has
been successively useless, a pest,
and a burden to society, and when
he dies there is not a soul to wish
that his life had been prolonged.
Two lives like these lie in possi-
bility enfolded within every infant
born into the world.

YOUTH.

MANHOOD.

Furnished by Mr. G. BRODIE, 51 Canal-street, New York, and drawn by VOIGT

from actual articles of Costume.