and in Spain. She herself lived under eleven governments—namely, Louis the Fifteenth, Louis the Sixteenth, the First Republic, Consulate under Napoleon, First Empire, Louis the Eighteenth, Charles the Tenth, Louis Philippe, Second Republic, Second Empire, Third Republic.

There are many other remarkable cases of centenarians ranging from a hundred upwards, but neither time nor space will allow me to enlarge on them. I have only endeavoured to show in some slight degree what may be considered the causes for and against the prolongation of life, and to cite a few unusual instances of longevity.

In the average statistics of human life it has been found that women live longer than men; the reason for that appears to be simple.

Up to the age of twenty to twenty-five the man is undoubtedly younger and less developed than the woman; but in the next twenty or thirty years of his life the man ages much more rapidly, because, apart from the strain and hardship of a profession, the exposure to unhealthy climates, the disappointments of fortune, he often leads a life of dissipation and excess, which early puts its stamp on his forehead and turns his hair grey before its time. The woman, on the other hand, who has often more than her share of anxieties, has, apart from the many accidents of life, but one serious and inevitable danger, that of the perpetuation of her race, which, safely passed, renovates rather than ages, and increases a woman's chance of longevity.

From the few facts that I have ventured to put together we may deduce, I think, the following conclusions, which I trust may be found of some interest by those who desire to have a general view of the expectation of life, its real duration, and the possible causes of its length and brevity.

(1) That, according to the best authorities of the last century, the extreme limit of life might be 125 years under extraordinary and almost abnormal circumstances.

(2) That the anticipation of life is roughly five times the time. that the organs of the body—not counting the brain, which develops later-require to attain their full and absolute maturity. This of course varies not only in races, but in individuals, some developing early and some much later, even in the same climate and in the same family.

(3) That rarely, if ever, is that full duration achieved, owing to disease, food, heredity, bad habits, wear and tear, and many other causes which shorten life.

(4) The slower the development the longer may be the duration of life.

(5) That all human beings are not born with the capacity for long life even under the most favourable circumstances. As the

organism of the human being is more complex than that of the lower animals, so his anticipation of life is far more variable.

(6) That those circumstances which conduce to longevity are undoubtedly late development, frugal habits, moderation, exemption from vicissitudes of climate and extreme of heat or cold, from mental worry and agitation, temperance in eating and drinking, with a fair amount of brain work when the brain is ready to undertake it.

We have all heard the well-worn axiom attributed to the Psalmist that the days of man are threescore and ten ;' but in Gen. vi. 3 will be found the following passage: Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.' This passage seems to have been overlooked, as I have rarely seen it quoted, although curiously enough it exactly corresponds to the theory that man should attain five times the period of reaching his maturity.

ALICE GLENESK.

RE

VOL. XLII-No. 247

ON OLD AGE

WRITERS have expatiated upon this subject from very early times, though not unhappily from the earliest (if Methuselah could have been induced to send the Nineteenth Century B.C. a signed article, it would have been really worth reading), and it is not likely, since so many people have had the experience of growing old, that anything very original can be said about it. If to live is to learn,' however, there may still be something novel, since the life of one generation is not the same with that of another, and there are peculiar circumstances which affect particular classes.

To the majority of us old age is merely the gradual attenuation of life; a thing 'like copper wire, which grows the narrower by going further;' the same dish, save that it has become insipid; an echo of existence, which in prolongation sounds fainter and fainter. Unless disease accompanies it, there is nothing to distinguish it, in a very marked manner, from the rest of adult experience. Of course there is the physical change, but this does not set in to any serious extent till very late. The years are not yet come of which we are compelled to say 'We have no pleasure in them,' and when the clouds return after the rain.' The almond tree may flourish and the daughters of music may be brought low (so far, at all events, that their high notes are thrown away upon us), but we have still what are cheerfully described as 'all our faculties.' We transact our business, often, indeed, sticking to it closer than ever. We say 'What?' a good deal oftener than we did, and some of us 'No.' (If there is to be but one word left to us, that seems to paterfamilias to be the best.) We like it to be thoroughly understood that we are not going to divest ourselves of our garments before going to bed. We even still take our pleasures, though more sadly; they may have lost their zest, but something remains; there is the feast, though it is the second day's feast; the joints have already become hashes, but the day of cold mutton is still afar off.

Moralists and philosophers have done their best, when they have themselves reached that time of life, to eulogise 'old age;' but they do not deceive even the young. (These old gentlemen,' says Youth with its callow cynicism, 'are Foxes who have lost their tails.')

:

They have done the same thing with poverty, and with the same illsuccess. It has had no exhilarating effect upon poor people. The reasons why old men have written in praise of old age are not far to seek they say with Johnson, 'Do not let us discourage one another.' They are in for it, and they make the best of it; it is not well to cry stinking fish. Moreover, there is a natural tendency among wellprincipled persons to make light of the ills of humanity; they fancy they are paying a compliment to Providence, and perhaps even conciliating it. There are many old men who say, and quite truthfully, that they would not be young again if they could; but what they mean is not, of course, that they would not exchange weakness for strength, and disillusion for hope, but that they have no desire to live their life over again. The clinging to existence that we so often see in even very old men does not arise from love of it. Pope, sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller's deathbed, and finding him much dispirited, told him he had been a good man, and would doubtless go to heaven. 'Ah, my good friend,' was the deplorable but pathetic reply, 'I wish God would let me stay at Whitton.' It was not, however, the attractions of Whitton that he had in his mind.

When old men ape young ones they afford a sad, and in fact rather a gruesome, spectacle, like that of a death's-head moth fluttering among butterflies; but it does not often happen. Their efforts to rival them in ordinary transactions are plucky endeavours to go on with the battle of life; not to throw up the sponge before they are compelled. Their ardour for work is sometimes excessive; indeed, in some cases they are seized with a desire for gain, which under the circumstances looks very like madness; but they are privately conscious of a sad falling-off in promptitude; their judgment may be as good as ever, but their intellectual motions are tardy. Those with whom they were wont to consult are often no longer with them; they have become isolated. Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,' is a line very appropriate to their condition. It seems curious that Shakespeare should have mentioned 'troops of friends' as accompaniments of old age. This statement is only true as regards those who have the gift of exciting personal attachment: the longer they live the larger is the number of those attracted to them; but with the vast majority of mankind, friendships are made in youth, but afterwards by no means easily, and therefore when men come to be old they have only their contemporaries, a small and dwindling 'troop,' whom they can call their friends.

Perhaps the best part of old age is its sense of proportion, which enables us to estimate misfortunes, or what seem to be such, at their true value. We have lived to recognise some of them as blessings in disguise; and at all events they do not take such exaggerated forms

in that quiet atmosphere as they were wont to do in the changeful cloudland of youth. We also know by experience how soon most of them 'blow over.' There is, however, one exception-that of death. When an old man is robbed, for example, of the bride of his youth, the being who has cheered his path from manhood, and in whom alone he has always found sympathy, the blow is fatal, not of necessity (alas!) to his life, but to all that made it, as it seems to him, worth living. It is said, indeed, that such a loss is rendered less severe to old men because they will soon be united to the object of their affections:

Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;
I too shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?

But to most of us this is but cold comfort; it may happen, but it also may not; there is no direct assurance of it, even for the most pious; and at the best, how weak is belief compared with certainty, the meeting we hope for beside the loss we know! Tennyson, it is true, affirms that death does not harrow the feelings of the old as of the young. The Grandmother' tells us that the time when she could have wept with the best has long gone by; but this poor lady was exceptionally old, and the loss she could not weep for was not that of a life companion.

The man we are all best acquainted with-Dr. Johnson-enjoyed himself in old age to the full. But he had had no enjoyment previously. Prosperity had been unknown to him till middle age had passed away. His society was more sought, his conversation (or what did duty for it) more prized, his wit and wisdom more welcomed after his grand climacteric than before it. This no doubt caused him to take too rose-coloured a view of old age. When the Bishop of St. Asaph observed that an old man must lose faster than he gets, Johnson replied, 'I think not, if he exerts himself.' Whereupon his Lordship was discreetly silent. The Doctor says again, 'There is nothing of the old man in my conversation,' which was true enough as regards its intelligence, but not the nature of it, which was essentially mature and consummate. In his heart he knew perfectly well what is amiss in our late autumn, and how the disease of 'anno domini' had begun to tell upon him. When Boswell, as usual,

assenting too readily to his patron's views, expressed a wish to experience old age, the Doctor was much irritated, and thundered out:

What, would you have decrepitude?'

The difference between youth and age as regards the conduct towards us of the other sex has been plaintively expressed: When I was young my civilities were taken as protestations of love; but now my protestations of love are taken as civilities.'

As a rule the poets, though they have a bad reputation for it, do not, when their hair is grey, philander even in verse, and have no