A world grown old in feeling would be an exhausted world, incapable of production along spiritual or artistic lines.

Now, the artist is always a child in the eagerness of his spirit and the freshness of his feeling; he retains the magical power of seeing things habitually, and still seeing them freshly.

Mr.
Lowell was walking with a friend along a country road when they came upon a large building which bore the inscription, "Home for Incurable Children." "They'll take me there some day," was the half-humorous comment of a sensitive man, to whom life brought great sorrows, but who retained to the very end a youthful buoyancy, courage, and faculty of finding delight in common things.
It is a significant fact that the greatest men and women never lose the qualities which are commonly associated with youth,--freshness of feeling, zest for work, joy in life.

Goethe at eighty-four studied the problems of life with the same deep interest which he had felt in them at thirty or forty; Tennyson's imagination showed some signs of waning power in extreme old age, but the magic of feeling was still fresh in his heart; Dr.Holmes carried his blithe spirit, his gayety and spontaneity of wit, to the last year of his life; and Mr.Gladstone at eighty-six was one of the most eager and aspiring men of his time.
Genius seems to be allied to immortal youth; and in this alliance resides a large part of its power.

For the man of genius does not demonstrate his possession of that rare and elusive gift by seeing things which have never been seen before, but by seeing with fresh interest what men have seen so often that they have ceased to regard it.