The command of comparisons that develops with age is, while no doubt good for the mind, somewhat numbing for the emotions. It is a wonderful thing to be able to look at an Italian cathedral and recognize the classical influences upon its Gothic, but it is still more wonderful to look at it altogether unaware, altogether open to its fascination. Literature is more thrilling before critical relativity arises; the worst of wine, in the early years of one's life, is better than the best toward the end; and as to your first love, earnestly though you may deny it to later partners and even to yourself, nothing will ever match its ecstasy, laced as it is likely to have been with reckless innocence.
