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youthful enthusiasm, succeeds, but whose Everybody desires to live long, but nomind "bears but one skimming," feels body wants to be old, says Swift. In old. So long as people have, or believe one sense this is not an unreasonable they have, the best part of themselves wish, for age simply counted by years is still unrevealed, some choice faculty hid- a very arbitrary mode of reckoning. If it den from daylight, they feel young. The could be foreseen how long the bodily poet Cowper, victim as he was of low and mental constitution would maintain spirits, and an inner life of brooding de- their vigour, then the period of age setspondency, yet betrays no premature ting in might be calculated with some acsense of age; if he notes his grey hairs, curacy. As it is, many men of fifty are it is to say the difference is more out- older than others a score years their senside than in. Writing at the age of fifty-ior. Decrepitude and deadened faculties five, he says to Lady Hesketh, “I have, are old age whenever they come. We of what perhaps you little suspect me of, in necessity use the term whether speaking my nature an infinite share of ambition, of decay, or length of days; but people but with it, I have at the same time, as may be excused from appropriating the you well know, an equal share of diffi- epithet old to themselves when the spring dence. To this combination of opposite of life still lasts in them. All vigorous qualities it has been owing, that till lately septuagenarians resent the civilities of I stole through life without undertaking forward politeness, officious in its offer of anything, yet always wishing to distin- assistance. Even those reverential marks guish myself." The works that made his of deference which have got the Spartan fame were composed in the ten years youth so much credit with posterity, from fifty to sixty; his industry during would certainly not suit the taste of our this period, the exceeding quiet of his more advanced civilization. The astute life, the simplicity of his tastes, and the man of the world, however many years constancy of his affections held him all he counts, prefers to meet men as equals this time aloof as it were from the course while he meets them at all. It is only of time. It is an effort for him to realize when a certain point is reached and reit. "It costs me not much difficulty," he tirement is courted, when age is alike writes to the same lady, whom he had felt and acknowledged a distinction by not seen for years, to suppose that my the bearer of a weight of years, and those friends, who were already old when I saw who admire how worthily and reverently them last, are old still, but it costs me a they are borne that open demonstrations good deal sometimes to think of those of respect are appropriate. While M. who were at that time young as being Thiers governed France, to obtrude his older than they were. I know not what age upon him by any paraded act of reverimpression Time may have made upon ence, would have been an impertinence. So your person, for while his claws (as our long indeed as he takes an active part in grannams called them) strike deep fur-public affairs it must still be such; but it rows in some faces, he seems to sheathe them with much tenderness, as if fearful of doing injury, to others; but though an enemy to the person, he is a friend to the mind, and you have found him so." To Cowper, his lady friends were always young and always attractive. We do not No house, said Sidney Smith, is well wonder at their tender devotion to him. fitted up in the country without people of Again, a full fruitful mind can never feel all ages in it. There must be an old man the saddening sense of ageing and slip- or woman to pet, he says: to respect, we ping out of the race, because the finer add; for a child's first impressions of old temper is never satisfied with the work age, such as influence the sentiment of done, and hopes to do better to be dai-a life, are caught from the tone around it. ly self-surpassed. So Dryden, felicitat- John Kemble's widow used to tell how ing the young poet, reserves one excellence as unattainable, short of mellow maturity:

What could advancing age have given more?
It might (what Nature never gives the young);
Have taught the numbers of thy native tongue
But satire needs not these, and wit will shine
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

was a graceful mark of respect when Lord St. Leonards came into court, at Kingston the other day, for all the bar to rise, and by standing show their reverence for the venerable peer, the "Nestor of the profession."

her husband on a visit to some great house had the ill luck to throw down and break some little Lady Mary's favorite doll. The child stood in speechless indignation till her anger found vent in an epithet, the most disparaging she knew, "You are an old man." In a simpler household, where age was held in vener

ation, a child of some three or four years berland beggar's exercise

then

he who ful

old was reading in Genesis to an ancient fils the test of real old age, that to the lady. "Are you as old as Methuselah?" current memory he always seemed old he asked, in all innocence, looking up Him from my childhood have I known, and into the kindly wrinkled face. The old lady, tickled by the question, repeated it a year after in the presence of the boy's younger brother, who seeing people laugh felt an apology incumbent upon him. "I daresay," said he, "he only said it out of compliment."

He was so old, he seems not older now,
does not constitute him an example of
sustained mental effort, “but he travels

on," and has travelled as long as the poet can remember him; and it was this The question of age to ordinary men ceaseless course which kept him alive. does not become a personal one so long Old Elspeth in the "Antiquary" is an as the majority of the people he meets, unprofitable instance of brain work, but either in domestic life, society, or the what an image of ceaseless busy memstreet are his seniors. A man of sixty ory she presents, of a mind for ever in living exclusively with people of seventy pursuit. All experience and observation or eighty would always feel young. We present examples to the point. Looking see this where an elderly daughter has the charge of parents, who engross her thoughts; until they die she scarcely realizes her own standing; it adds perhaps a gloom to her life to find herself suddenly in another class- -a generation older, a subject for that "powerful distemper old age," as Montaigne calls it.

upon the leaders in political life, it sometimes seems that mankind has gained ten years of working power since the Psalmist numbered the days of our age. And what work is harder! What taxes the powers with stronger tension! It is not this taxing of the faculties which tries men where the power exists it demands exercise, and frets the system if left unemployed. What does wear out the brain and shortens life is harass, which torments the mind much more through our private interests and affections than through great public responsibilities. We doubt if a distressed life is ever a very long one.

Either the lot is free

from such conflicts, or the temperament is too calm and equable to be violently tossed by them.

It is one of the proper functions of Old Age to set off human life at its best, to reconcile men to its troublous course. If no man can be called happy till his death, they who are nearest the final goal and still cheerful and contented best deserve the epithet. Their serenity illuminates the whole backward path. The griefs, cares, and perplexities of life lose some of their bitterness when we see the bitterness outlived. There are pleasures which years cannot extinguish. As the As the average age of woman exceeds active business of life recedes from the that of man, our examples of clever disfailing hand we see these pleasures as- tinguished old ladies would probably outsume a larger and more satisfying aspect. number our list of lawyers and statesThe beneficent habit of industry, the men, though the eyes of all the world activity which leads up to and accompa- are not upon them in the same way. nies most extreme old age, finds new What a bevy of witty, learned, charming work for itself, and often assumes a poet-old ladies depart this scene together at ical form. A man of ninety-two, whose the close of Miss Berry's Memoirs. She life had been passed in an incredible in her ninetieth year, her sister Agnes a round of toil of mind and body, when labour was no longer possible, made it a business to survey the stars every night. His tottering steps' last office was duly to lead him to the open air, where he could "examine the heavens;" his last words, "How clear the moon shines tonight." One great lesson of old age to us all is, that if we would live long and keep our powers, we must use them. All noted examples of old age are associated with exercise of some kind, either of body or of brain, and as being noted chiefly of brain. Indolence seems never to live long. To be sure, the old Cum

year younger, Joanna Baillie eighty-nine, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, a contemporary of the set, all maintaining their powers to the last; their interests, letters, and conversation, constituting them cherished members of a brilliant society.

Mary Somerville is a still later and more signal example of the life-sustaining power of brain work. An acquaintance has recorded his impressions of her on her ninetieth birthday, when he visited her at Naples in 1870; "In the spacious drawing-room of a great palazzo

*

People's Magazine, February 1873'

he found her with two ladies; herself, hand, or deep religious faith on the other. sitting watchful and dignified in a low Acting upon a proud nature, accustomed arm-chair. Her ninety years had with- to domineer in the days of its strength, ered her frame and impaired her hearing, and, in fact, intellectually superior, they but her interest in current events was sometimes produce very tragical effects. still keen. "She had foreseen the war fifty years before at the Restoration." She was military and commiserating, critic and woman by turns. You had but to close your eyes and to fancy a clever modern Englishwoman talking; the words and thoughts were as fresh and current as those of the clever young wife of a clever young Member of Parliament. But of course she was most interesting when she came to talk of herself.

"I do not apologize for talking of myself," she said, "for it is always good for the young to hear that old age is not so terrible as they fear. My life is a very placid one. I have my coffee early; from eight to twelve I write or read in bed; then I rise and paint in my studio for an hour-that is all I can manage now! The afternoon is my time of rest, then comes dinner time, and after that I sit here and am glad to see any kind friends who may like to visit me." Then she would explain what was the reading and writing she was engaged upon. She was correcting and adding to the first edition of "Molecular and Microscopic Science," "only putting it in order for my daughter to publish when a second edition is

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called for after my death. Oh, they are quite competent to do it," she would say with a smile; "I took care they should be much better educated than I was. And I am reading a good deal now-reading Herodotus. I took him down from my shelves the other day-it was the first time I had tried to read Greek for fifty years -to see if I had forgotten the char: acter. To my delight I found I could read and understand him quite easily. What a charming writer Herodotus is!" All this was without the slightest pedantry—the utterance of a perfectly natural, simple mind, that dwelt upon subjects which interested it when they saw that they interested its neighbour.

Old age and helplessness, in such a case, will harden into misanthropy, and deliberately die of want and starvation rather than accept prolonged life on intolerable terms. Swift says that dignity, high station, or great riches are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise apt to insult them on the score of age. Certainly independence is desirable in a very particular sense; but the happiest old age seems to be found where competence is enjoyed apart from rank and state. And what a deep pathos attends the death of the very old what a link with the past is snapped - how much knowl

edge is irrecoverably lost to the world!

To lament over human life as a failure, to sum up its transient pleasures, sorrows, losses, as the whole that is worth dwelling upon, is so general a tone that it seems taking a low line to give weight to compensations; but surely the blessings of Providence which spread over the whole of existence are designed to dignify every part. Youth has many friends and all the world for admirers, that the artist may well lavish his fairest and responds so well to ideal treatment colours upon it. But if a man will appeal to his own experience, and ask himself from whom he has derived the greatest benefits, we believe that he will find that he owes his snuggest comforts, his most genial companionship, his highest Converse, his warmest sympathy, to that age which is set down as hard and worldly because it is necessarily busy with the world's material things, but which in fact is naturally more accessible than youth from the knowledge that the more passionate and exciting passages of life are over, and that a stage of life is reached in which its romance and many of its most lively interests can only be tasted through sympathies.

We have dwelt upon the bright side of the picture not often seen, perhaps, but, where temper, intellect, and health combine, to be found within each reader's experience. Rarely among the poor We let our years slip through our findoes extreme old age descend with so gers like water. Of young and old alike indulgent an aspect. The very old can this is too often true. It is no part of scarcely be other than objects of unmin- our aim to intrude on the preacher's ofgled pity when the material necessities fice; we have confined ourselves to the of life need labour for their supply. social aspect of the question The loss of authority, the dread of de- viewed by a man's self and those about pendence, the spectre of the workhouse! him. There are deep and solemn natural cheerfulness is not strong thoughts peculiar to every stage. Surely enough to encounter these terrors un- the way to let no period slip by us unaided by numbed faculties on the one heeded is to study the duties and privi

age as

leges of each with an impartial judgment | but impalpably a score of things that you and a thankful heart.

THINGS.

From Temple Bar.

cannot buy in shops, which go to make up the fascinating picture. But you cannot even tell me on the morrow what things, bought in shops, she put off or put on. Of course I allude only to those outward things which a bachelor may wot of and name. You can only say "she changed her things."

ONCE upon a time, whilst visiting a Sunday-school in the country, I was a witness of the following painful incident. A lady of gaunt presence and aggressive mien had just laid down the law to a class of small girls that created matter was divided into two great classes — people and things; "and now," said the teacher, reversing the finger with which she had thrust this precept down the open mouths before her towards her own fair bosom, "and now, Sarah Clarke, what am I?" "A spiteful old thing," was the reply. pills (partly consumed); one brace end, I was shocked! I was more shocked still when the weeping culprit confessed that this description of her teacher was founded upon an expression let fall by Miss Rose, and which she (the guilty one) had overheard. Now "Miss Rose was the Vicar's eldest daughter, and it was part of the lex non scripta of the village that everything Miss Rose said or did was right. So the little damsel had not answered without authority; and who can say but that, after all, she might have been justified? I only know that the up-to the benefit of Miss Lottie Rosepink at shot of the incident was, that a certain young gentleman, about whom, as it appeared, the gaunt instructress of youth had been talking, had an interview with the Vicar next morning, and that a marriage (to which that lady was not invited) was the consequence.

I accompany you to your chambers where you live. I open the drawer of your dressing-table, and I say, "Holloa! old man, what's all this?" You reply, " Oh, only a lot of things." You answer correctly. "Things" is the word—the only word. Had you said, “My dearest friend, in that drawer have been accumulated the following articles, to wit: two white ties (spoilt in the tying); one coloured idem (out of fashion); one box of

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three letters, eleven pieces of decayed vegetable matter supposed to have once been flowers, two play bills, one righthand white kid glove (five and threequarters), one amber mouthpiece, one pipe it won't fit, one (half) return railway ticket, four odd studs, one idem sleeve link, one blue satin bow (faded), five lozenges (melted and sticking), two dinner bills (Richmond), one idem (Greenwich), a pack (ten short) of playing cards, one soda-water cork, four tickets of admission

the Royal Breakdown Theatre, nineteen pair of soiled gloves (my own), and the head of a broken walking-stick," - you would only have wasted time and breath. By your sensible expression, "a lot of things," I understand you perfectly. Many of those articles had their history

This little tale is told to illustrate the possibly their charm; but this had danger of definitions. I write of THINGS. gone out of your mind before they went What things? I decline to define them. into that drawer. It is one of the characI am conscious that were I to try and do teristics of things, that you cannot deso, I should be tripped up on every page. stroy them. That little white kid glove, Why do I not qualify my subject then, for example. Time was when you carand write "Some Things," or Things in ried it home under your waistcoat, and this connection or that connection, at the mumbled it idiotically. I daresay you head of my paper? Because my "things "cannot now remember to whom it beare, emphatically, things no more or longed. You had not the heart to burn less. We speak of them, we hear of them it in the fire; and so like those wretches as things; and things, pure and simple, who, lacking the bad courage to comthey shall be. mit murder, abandon their offspring to "Do wait two moments, whilst I put chance, you fling the once prized covering on my things," says some enchantress of a too trusting hand into that drawer, who will accept your escort (say, to Ken- with the other-things. Is the sodasington Gardens). You wait three quar- water cork, or the blue satin bow-was ters of an hour, and are rewarded by a head-ache or heart-ache — the result of vision of sweetness and light. She has that Richmond dinner for four, which cost put on her things. What things? Pal- £78s. 9d.? Why did you not use that othpably a dress, bonnet, boots and gloves; 'er half of your return ticket to Brighton?

66

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moved." Where? Echo makes the usual idiotic response. Will no benevolent person found a refuge for things- where that coat you wore on the happiest day of your life, but which now breeds moths and infests your newer clothing, may repose in honour and camphorized; where baby's perambulator may be enshrined, and that old arm chair in which you built that Castle of Spain, which is realized in Eaton Square, may rest on its three legs and be happy?

What about those pills and lozenges? | hold goods. You scoff at Madame's prejuHave you forgotten that time when your dices on this score, and when asked what pillow was a hot clinker, and the sheets is to be done with that old furniture you of your bed made of broken glass-when brought from your bachelor chamber, you the pattern on the paper wove itself into begin to understand her. It is too old to figures like those in a kaleidoscope, which be ornamental, and not old enough to be danced and whirled at you, even when curious. It is big and heavy, and ugly to you had shut your eyes? The fellows of boot. It will cost more to move than it those little grey lumps mouldering in that is worth, and there is no use for it. It is box, saved your life they are of no use discussed, and rightly, as those things. now. Where is Miss Rosepink? Is the Well, you won't have them sold, and vegetable matter connected in any there's an end of it! If there were some way with that lady? No; but if I re- good sort of young fellow now, you say, member aright what passed one morning just setting up in chambers, you would in Bow Street, the broken stick is. Bah! give them to him; but there is not, that the game was not worth the candle! you know of. Here again is the great How utterly the romance must have gone characteristic of THINGS-you cannot out of everything else in this drawer when get rid of them. You cannot leave you mix it with reminiscences of her? them in distant streets as you can Well, well, we have changed all this. an unloved dog or cat. You must not Vous vous êtes rangé, mon ami. Master make a bonfire of them in the street. If Bob is at school, and the baby in knicker-you leave them behind in the old house bockers. Your hairdresser informs you you get, sooner or later, a polite note that your flowing locks are getting a little begging you to "have those things rethin on the top, and your tailor remarks that he must give you another two inches in the waistband. No more little dinners at the Star and Garter; no more benefits at the Royal Breakdown. After dinner you subside into your easy chair, from which fortalice it is difficult to dislodge you, when Madame, who does not join in your recently found ideas respecting evening parties, sends down word that it is time for you to dress. She started in the race long after you, my friend, and has not gone the pace you have. You No one knows how many useless, have prospered, and outgrown your house. precious, undisposable Things he has Miss Mary is of an age to require the until he moves. This writer has kept services of a governess, and Madame house, and broken up housekeeping in yearns after that more spacious and four quarters of this globe, and claims to westerly mansion to which your circum- be an author ty upon things. The scores stances entitle her. The fearful ordeal of pamphlets and magazines which you of house-hunting is passed, and the move might bind; the bundles of papers which is imminent. Now you find a lot of things you might want; the scores of miscelof a new class about which you are per-laneous articles which might come in for plexed. Baby's perambulator (which has something, some day! There are some been the state conveyance of three tyrants for which you have no use, and no of that dignity) for example, what is to be respect, but of which you cannot get rid. done with that? You suggest that possi- Old toothbrushes are in this category. bly it may be required again, and get They stick like a bad character. They your ears boxed (not severely) for your turn up again months after you have pains. Madame remembers how proudly fondly counted upon their extinction. she followed it in the first days of her In a fit of ungovernable phrenzy I once completed matronhood, and, all faded and hurled a remnant of this class out of winrusty as it is, has a weakness for the dow into the street, heedless of the safety ramshackle affair. She would willingly of innocent passers-by, or the powers of give it away to some poor woman, for Policeman X. It was brought back, and baby's sake; but send it to the broker, the villain who restored it wanted "sumabandon it in the back yard? Never! No mut to drink" for his trouble! poor woman appears to claim it for baby's sake, so it must go with the other house

The dark day that comes on every house is rich in the discovery of things. Some

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