  LIFE—A RIVER.Pliny has compared a River to Human Life; and Sir Humphry Davy was a hundred times struck with the analogy, particularly among mountain scenery. A full and clear River is the most poetical object in nature; and contemplating this, Davy wrote: “The river, small and clear in its origin, gushes forth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and meanders through a wild and picturesque country, nourishing only the uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, its state of infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind, in which fancy and strength of imagination are predominant; it is more beautiful than useful. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions; it is applied to move machinery, to irrigate meadows, and to bear upon its bosom the stately barge;—in this mature state, it is deep, strong, and useful. As it flows on towards the sea, it loses its force and its motion; and at last, as it were, becomes lost and mingled with the mighty abyss of waters.” Again, Life is often compared to a River, because one year follows another, and vanishes like the ripples on its surface. A flood, without ebb, bears us onward; “we can never cast anchor in the river of life,” as Bernardin de St. Pierre finely and profoundly observes. But the comparison can be still further developed. “It is taking a false idea of life,” says Cuvier, “to consider it as a single link, which binds the elements of the living body together, since, on the contrary, it is a power which moves and sustains them unceasingly. These elements,” he adds, “do not for an instant preserve the same relations and connexions; But this is only the new enunciation of a very old idea in science. Long before Cuvier, Leibnitz said, “Our body is in a perpetual flux, like a river; particles enter and leave it continually.” And long before Leibnitz, physiologists had compared the human body to the famous ship of Theseus, which was always the same ship, although, from having been so often repaired, it had not a single piece with which it was originally constructed. The truth is, that the idea of the continued renovation of our organs M. Flourens has proved by direct experiment that the mechanism of the development of the bones consists essentially in a continual irritation of all the parts composing them. But it is the change of material; for its form changes very little. Cuvier has further developed this fine idea: In living bodies no molecule remains in its place; all enter and leave it successively: life is a continued whirlpool, the direction of which, complicated as it is, remains always constant, as well as the species of molecules which are drawn into it, but not the individual molecules themselves; on the contrary, the actual material of the living body will soon be no longer in it; and yet it is the depository of the force which will constrain the future material in the same direction as itself. So that the form of these bodies is more essential to them than the material, since this latter changes unceasingly, while the other is maintained. 28. One may well say of a given individual, that he lives and is the same, and is spoken of as an identical being from his earliest infancy to old age, without reflecting that he does not contain the same particles, which are produced and renewed unceasingly, and die also in the old state, in the hair and in the flesh, in the bone and in the blood,—in a word, in the whole body.—Plato; The Banquet. THE SPRING-TIME OF LIFE.The Spring-time of Life,—the meeting-point of the child and the man,—the brief interval which separates restraint from liberty,—has a warmth of life, which Dr. Temple thus pictures with glowing eloquence. “To almost all men this period is a bright spot to which the memory ever afterwards loves to recur; and even those who can remember nothing but folly,—folly, of which they have repented, and relinquished,—yet find a nameless charm in recalling such folly as that. For indeed even folly at that age is sometimes the 29. Education of the World. THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS OF LIFE.It is a saying of Southey’s, “that, live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back to them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.” But in how strong a light has this been placed by the American teacher, Jacob Abbott, whose writings have obtained so wide a circulation in England. “Life,” he says, “if you understand by it the season of preparation for eternity, is more than half gone; life, so far as it presents opportunities and facilities for penitence and pardon,—so far as it bears on the formation of character, and is to be considered as a period of probation,—is unquestionably more than half gone to those who are between fifteen and twenty. That pious man, who, while he lived, was the Honourable Charles How, and might properly now be called the honoured, says, that “twenty years might be deducted for education from the threescore and ten, which are the allotted sum of human life; this portion,” he adds, “is a time of discipline and restraint, and young people are never easy till they are got over it.” There is indeed during those years much of restraint, of weariness, of hope, and of impatience; all which feelings lengthen the apparent duration of time. Sufferings are not included here; but with a large portion of the human race, in all Christian countries (to our shame be it spoken), it makes a large item in the account; there is no other stage of life in which so much gratuitous suffering is endured,—so much that might have been spared,—so much that is a mere wanton, wicked addition to the sum of human misery, arising solely and directly from want of feeling in others, their obduracy, their caprice, their stupidity, their malignity, their cupidity, and their cruelty. 30. The Doctor. PASSING GENERATIONS.“The deaths of some, and the marriages of others,” says Cowper, “make a new world of it every thirty years. Within that space of time the majority are displaced, and a new generation has succeeded. Here and there one is permitted to stay longer, that there may not be wanting a few grave dons like myself to make the observation.” Man, like a stream, is in perpetual flow. Death’s a destroyer of quotidian prey: My youth, my noontide his, my yesterday; The bold invader shares the present hour, Each moment on the former shuts the grave. While man is growing, life is in decrease, And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb. Our birth is nothing but our death begun, As tapers waste that instant they take fire.—Young. Yet, infinitely short as the term of human life is when compared with time to come, it is not so in relation to time past. A hundred and forty of our own generations carry us back to the Deluge, and nine more of antediluvian measure to the Creation,—which to us is the beginning of time; “for time itself is but a novelty, a late and upstart thing in respect of the ancient of days.” A home-tourist, halting in the quiet churchyard of Mortlake, in Surrey, about half a century since, fell into the following reflective train of calculation of generations: “I reflected that, as it is now more than four hundred years since this ground became the depository of the dead, some of its earliest occupants might, without an hyperbole, have been ancestors of the whole contemporary English nation. If we suppose that a man was buried in this
That is to say, nine millions and a half of persons; or, as nearly as possible, the exact population might at this day be descended in a direct line from any individual buried in this or any other churchyard in the year 1395, who left six children, each of whose descendants have had on the average three children! And, by the same law, every individual who has six children may be the root of as many descendants within 420 years, provided they increase on the low average of only three in every branch. His descendants would represent an inverted triangle, of which he would constitute the lower angle. “To place the same position in another point of view, I calculated also that every individual now living must have had for his ancestor every parent in Britain living in the year 1125, the age of Henry I., taking the population of that period at 8,000,000. Thus, as every individual must have had a father and mother, or two progenitors, each of whom had a father and mother, or four progenitors, each generation would double its progenitors every thirty years. Every person living may, therefore, be considered as the apex of a triangle, of which the base would represent the whole population of a remote age.
That is to say, if there have been a regular co-mixture of marriages, every individual of the living race must of necessity be descended from parents who lived in Britain in 1125. Some districts or clans may require a longer period for the co-mixture, and different circumstances may cut off some families, and expand others; but, in general, the lines of families would cross each other, and become interwoven, like the lines of lattice-work. A single intermixture, however remote, would unite all the subsequent branches in common ancestry, rendering the contemporaries of every nation members of one expanded family, after the lapse of an ascertainable number of generations.” 31. Dr. Johnson. 32. The Doctor. 33. Sir Richard Phillips’s Morning’s Walk from London to Kew. AVERAGE DURATION OF LIFE.The Assurance of Lives has often been regarded, by weak-minded persons, as an interference with the ways of Providence, which is highly reprehensible. But it can be shown that calculation of lives can be averaged with certainty. Mr. Babbage, in his work on the Assurance of Lives, observes: “Nothing is more proverbially uncertain than the duration of human life, where the maxim is applied to an individual; yet there are few things less subject to fluctuation than the average duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the inhabitants of a village or In a paper on Life Assurance, in the Edinburgh Review, the Average Mortality of Europe is thus stated: “In England 1 person dies annually in every 45; in France, 1 in every 42; in Prussia, 1 in every 38; in Austria, 1 in every 33; in Russia, 1 in every 28. Thus England exhibits the lowest mortality; and the state of the public health is so improved, that the present duration of existence may be regarded (in contrast to what it was a hundred years ago) as, in round numbers, four to three.” The Registrar-General gives the following statistical results: “The average age of life is 33? years. One-fourth of the born die before they reach the age of seven years, and the half before the seventeenth year. Out of 100 persons, only six reach the age of 60 years and upwards, while only 1 in 1000 reaches the age of 100 years. Out of 500, only 1 attains 80 years. Out of the thousand million living persons, 330,000,000 die annually, 91,000 daily, 3730 every hour, 60 every minute, consequently 1 every second. The loss is, however, balanced by the gain in new births. Tall men are supposed to live longer than short ones. Women are generally stronger than men until their fiftieth year, afterwards less so. Marriages are in proportion to single life (bachelors and spinsters) as 100:75. Both births and deaths are more frequent in the night than in the day.” PASTIMES OF CHILDHOOD RECREATIVE TO MAN.Paley regarded the pleasure which the amusements of childhood afford as a striking instance of the beneficence He who could scan the earth and ocean’s bound, And tell the countless sands that strew the shore, as Horace says, invent the children’s rattle? Toys have served to unbend the wise, to occupy the idle, to exercise the sedentary, and to instruct the ignorant. To come to our own times: we have heard of a Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, a man of grave years and thoughts, being surprised playing at leap-frog with his young nephews. The same desire to unstring the bow, as old Æsop taught, impels sturdy workmen, let loose from their toil, to seek diversion in the amusements of boyhood. Often have we seen scores of men break forth from a factory or printing-office for their dinner-hour, and in great measure disport themselves like schoolboys in a playground. PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION LATE IN LIFE.Dugald Stewart, in his Essay on the Cultivation of Intellectual Habits, predicates, in persons of mature age, what may be termed the enjoyment of a second season of enjoyments far more refined than the first. Thus he says: “Instances have frequently occurred of individuals in whom the power of imagination has, at an advanced period of life, been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind, awakening, as if The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are op’ning Paradise. Nothing can be more deplorable than a man who has outlived the likings, and perchance the innocence, of his early life; which is by no means rare, if they have not grown out of the study and love of nature, for this clings to the heart in all the vicissitudes of life,—in adversity as well as in prosperity; in sickness as well as in health; even to extreme old age, when almost every other worldly source of pleasure is dried up. Hear the testimony of Hannah More, at the age of eighty-two: “The only one of my youthful fond attachments,” says she, “which exists still in full force, is a passion for scenery, raising flowers, and landscape gardening.” Well indeed will it be for the young if they follow the example of this venerable woman, and early acquire a passion for scenery and flowers. For as they pass through life, they will find the world often frowning upon them, but the flowers will always smile. And it is sweet, in the day of adversity, to be met with a smile. We remember a touching instance of the love of flowers lighting up the last hours of a botanist who had wooed nature in the picturesque vale of Mickleham, in Surrey. A few short hours before his death, he turned to his niece and said: “Mary, it is a fine morning; go and see if Scilla verna is come in flower.” WHAT IS MEMORY?Man possesses a nervous system pervaded by a nervous force, the modification of which manifests itself to our consciousness in the varied phenomena of what we call Sensation. From Sensation, the next step is to Perception. Sensation, we know, as such, dies away from the consciousness, or rather is obliterated by fresh impressions upon the sensorium. We cannot retain a feeling in perpetuity. But when a definite sensation has been excited, or a distinct experience has been acquired, something remains behind; and upon these residua, left in the structure of the nerves, or the cerebral tissues, or the animating soul, and on the permanence of these residua, rests the whole possibility of reminiscence. Upon this blending and organisation round the centre of mind-life follows the faculty of Memory, or that power which the mind possesses of making a peculiar representation of an object for itself, of creating a special idea of it by giving greater prominence to some features, and letting others sink away unthought of, till there remains an image, the product of its own free activity, which it can mentally connect with other trains of ideas, and thus multiply, as it were, the bridges by which it can return to it at any period. Byron has beautifully personified this paramount image: She was a form of life and light, That seen became a part of sight; And rose, where’er I turned mine eye, The Morning-star of Memory! “Mere abstraction, or what is called absence of mind, is often attributed, very unphilosophically, to a want of memory. La Fontaine, in a dreaming mood, forgot his own child, and, after warmly commending him, observed how proud he should be to have such a son. In this kind of abstraction external things are either only dimly seen, or are utterly overlooked; but the memory is not necessarily asleep. In fact, its too intense activity is frequently the cause of the abstraction. This faculty is usually the 34. See an admirable paper on Dr. Morell’s Introduction to Mental Philosophy, in Saturday Review; also Mysteries of Life, Death, and Futurity, for the following articles: “What is Memory?” “How the Function of Memory takes place;” “Persistence of Impressions;” “Value of Memory;” “Registration;” and “Decay of Memory;” pp. 69-75. 35. Literary Leaves, by D. L. Richardson. CONSOLATION IN GROWING OLD.Montaigne said of Cicero On Old Age, “It gives one an appetite for old age.” Its persuasive eloquence is the inspiration of an elevated philosophy. Flourens has cleverly said, “The moral aspect of old age is its best side. We cannot grow old without losing our physique, nor also without our morale gaining by it. This is a noble compensation.” Patience is the privilege of age. A great advantage to the man who has lived is, that he knows how to wait. Again, experience is an old man’s memory. Buffon was seventy years of age (this was young for Buffon, he lived to eighty-one) when he wrote The Epochs of Nature, in which he calls old age a prejudice. Without our arithmetic we should not, according to Buffon, know that we were old. “Animals,” he says, “do not know it; it is only by our arithmetic that we judge otherwise.” Buffon having settled on his estate at Montbard, in Burgundy, there pursued his studies with such regularity that the history of one day seems to have been that of all the others through a period of fifty years. After he was dressed, he dictated letters, and regulated his domestic affairs; and at six o’clock he retired to his studies in a pavilion in his garden, about a furlong from the house. This pavilion was only furnished with a large wooden secretary and an arm-chair; and within it was another cabinet, ornamented with drawings of birds and beasts. Prince Henry of Prussia called it the cradle of natural history; and Rousseau, before he entered it, used to fall on his knees, and kiss the threshold. Here Buffon composed the greater number of his works. At nine o’clock he usually took an hour’s rest; and his breakfast, a piece of bread and two glasses of wine, was brought to him. When he had written two hours after breakfast, he returned to the house. At dinner he enjoyed the gaieties and trifles of the table. After dinner he slept an hour in his room; took a solitary walk; and during the rest of the evening he either conversed with his family or guests, or examined his papers at his desk. At nine o’clock he went to bed, to prepare himself for the same routine of judgment and pleasure. He had a most fervid imagination; and his anxious solicitude for a literary immortality, “that last infirmity of noble minds,” continually betrayed him to be a vain man. “Every day that I rise in good health,” said Buffon to a conceited young man, “have I not the enjoyment of this day as fully as you? If I conform my actions, my appetites, my desires, to the strict impulses of wise nature, am I not as wise and happy as you are? And the view of the past, which causes so much regret to old fools, does it not afford me, on the contrary, the pleasures of memory, agreeable pictures of precious images, which are equal to your objects of pleasure? For these images are sweet; they are pure; they leave upon the mind only pleasing remembrances; the “Some one asked Fontenelle, when ninety-five years old, which were the twenty years of his life he most regretted. He replied that he had little to regret; but the age at which he had been most happy was that from forty-five to seventy-five. He made this avowal in sincerity, and he proved what he said by natural and consoling truths. At forty-five, fortune is established; reputation made; consideration obtained; the condition of life established; dreams vanished or fulfilled; projects miscarried or matured; most of the passions calmed, or at least cooled; the career in the work that every man owes to society nearly completed; enemies, or rather the enemies, are fewer, because the counterpoise of merit is known by the public voice,” &c. Galen, speaking of Hippocrates, and wishing to represent in one word the man who, in his eyes, constitutes the most perfect type of slowly matured wisdom and profound experience, simply calls him the old man. The first rule of the Art of Preserving Life is to know how to be old. “Few men know how to be old,” said La Rochefoucauld. Voltaire has— Qui n’a pas l’esprit de son Âge, De son Âge a tous les malheurs. The first rule is more philosophic than medical, but is perhaps none the less valuable. The second rule is to know yourself well; which is also a philosophical precept applied to medicine. The third rule is properly to conform to regular habits. Old men, who spend one day like another, with the same moderation, the same appetites, live always. “My miracle is existence,” said Voltaire; and if that foolish vanity which never grows old had not induced him, when eighty-four years of age, to make a ridiculous journey to Paris, his miracle would have continued a century, as was the case with Fontenelle. “Few would believe,” said M. ReveillÉ-Parise, “how far a little health, well managed, may be made to go.” And Cicero Most men die of disease, very few die of mere age. Man has made for himself a sort of artificial life, in which the moral is often worse than the physical; and the physical itself often worse than it would be with habits more serene and calm, more regularly and judiciously exercised. Haller, the physiologist, says: “Man should be placed among the animals that live the longest: how very unjust, then, are our complaints of the brevity of life!” He then inquires what can be the extreme limit of the life of man; and he gives it as his opinion that man might live not less than two centuries. M. Flourens, Haller, who has collected a great number of examples of Longevity, says that he has found more than
and one who reached the astonishing age of 169 years. 36. Human Longevity and the Amount of Life upon the Globe. By P. Flourens, Perpetual Secretary to the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1855. LENGTH OF DAYS.There are few records so generally interesting as those of human existence being protracted beyond “threescore years and ten,” and the Psalmist’s limit of “fourscore years.” It is natural to expect every man, woman, and child to take a kindred interest in such matters: the girl or boy reads with wonder the dates upon the tombstones of very aged persons; and old men and women approach these memorials with awe, in proportion to their fancied distance from the same earthly bourn. All cannot alike read the story of the pictured urn, or the mysteries of the inverted torch or the winged mundus; but the uneducated young and old are sensible of the The paths of glory lead but to the grave. We are not, therefore, surprised at the implicit belief in such records in times gone by, when no populous village in England was without a man or woman of fourscore years old. It has, however, become of late a matter of some moment to inquire into the authority on which statements of extreme old age have usually rested; and the result has been to shake the testimony of many recorded cases of great longevity. Lord Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, quotes as a fact unquestioned, that a few years before he wrote, a morris-dance was performed in Herefordshire, at the May-games, by eight men, whose ages in the aggregate amounted to eight hundred years! In the seventeenth century, some time after Bacon wrote, two Englishmen are reported to have died at ages greater than almost any of those which have been attained in other nations. According to statements which are printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, as well as his epitaph in Westminster Abbey, Thomas Parr lived 152 years and 9 months; Henry Jenkins, 169 years. The testimony in these extraordinary instances is, however, considered by the Registrar-General by no means conclusive, as it evidently rests on uncertain tradition, and on the very fallible memories of illiterate old men; for there is no mention of documentary evidence in Parr’s case, and the births date back to a period (1538) before the parish registers were instituted by Cromwell. Yet parish registers are sometimes astounding; for in that of Evercreech, in Somersetshire, occurs this entry: “1588, 20th Dec., Jane Britton, of Evercriche, a Maidden, as she afirmed, of the age of 200 years, was buried.” Here is a difficulty of belief cleared up. In the register of the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, is entered, among the “Burialles, Thomas Cam, ye 22d inst. of January 1588 (curiously enough the date of the Somersetshire entry), Aged 207 years, Holywell-street. George Garrow, parish clerk.” In a newspaper paragraph of 1848, this entry is stated to Another instance, less known, but better authenticated, is that of Sir Ralph Vernon, of Shipbrooke, who was born some time in the thirteenth century, died at the great age of 150; and is said to have been succeeded by his descendant in the sixth generation; he was called “Old Sir Ralph,” or Sir R. “the long-liver.” A deed of settlement by him was the cause of long litigation; and it is said that the papers respecting this law-suit still exist, to prove the fact of the old knight’s patriarchal age. In Conway churchyard is the tombstone of Lowry Owens, stated to have died “May the 1st, 1766, aged 192;” but the inscription has evidently been recut, and, it is presumed, with a difference, especially as the round of the “9” is above the date-line. In the church of Abbey Dore, Herefordshire, is a slab to the memory of Elizabeth Lewis, who died “aged 141 years,” which is stated to be confirmed by the parish register. In the churchyard of Cheve Prior, Worcestershire, is a record of a man who died at the age of 309; doubtless meant for 39, the blundering stonecutter having put the 30 first and 9 afterwards. In these and similar cases our belief should be in proportion to the trustworthiness of the record, allowance being made for the imperfect state of documents of times when writing was a comparatively rare accomplishment. It is curious to contrast this state of things with the chronicle of our times, when, occasionally, one day’s newspaper records several instances of longevity: In the Morning Post, January 30th, 1858, out of thirty-five deaths recorded, with the ages, there were five upwards of 60 and under 70; 70 and under 80, seven; in 80th year and upwards, nine; one female, 95; and Mrs. E. Miles, of Bishop Lidyard, near Taunton, 112. In the obituary of the Times, February 20th, 1862, were recorded the deaths of persons who had attained the following ages: one of 103, 37. See Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage, ed. 1848. HISTORIC TRADITIONS THROUGH FEW LINKS.Of late years considerable interest has been added to the attraction of records of Longevity, by showing through how few individuals may be traced the evidence of far-distant events and incidents in our history. Mr. Sidney Gibson, F.S.A., relates some curious instances of this class. A person living in 1847, then aged about 61, was frequently assured by his father that, in 1786, he repeatedly saw one Peter Garden, who died in that year at the age of 127 years; and who, when a boy, heard Henry Jenkins give evidence in a court of justice at York, to the effect that, when a boy, he was employed in carrying arrows up the hill before the battle of Flodden Field.
So that a person living in 1786 conversed with a man that fought at Flodden Field. Mr. Gibson then passes on to some remarkable instances of longevity from the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, the record of the celebrated cause in the reign of Richard II., when, among the noble and knightly deponents who gave evidence in the following year, 1386, were: Sir John Sully, Knight of the Garter and a distinguished soldier of the cross, who had served for eighty years, was then, by his own account, 105 years of age, and who is supposed to have died in his 108th year. But, more remarkable, John Thirlwall, an esquire of an Not far from Thirlwall Castle, at Irthington, Mr. B. Gibson has seen the register of the burial of Robert Bowman, one of the most remarkable of the long-lived yeomen of that parish, who died in the year 1823, at the age of 118. Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A., has also illustrated our subject by the following curious evidence. Lettice, Countess of Leicester, was born in 1539 or ’40, and was consequently 7 years old at the death of Henry VIII. She may very well have had a recollection of the bluff monarch, who cut off the head of her great-aunt, Anne Boleyn. She was thrice married, and had seen six English sovereigns, or seven if Philip be counted; her faculties were unimpaired at 85; and until a year or two of her death, on Christmas-day 1634, at the age of 94, she “could yet walk a mile of a morning.” Lettice was one of a long-lived race: her father lived till 1596; two of her brothers attained the ages of 86 and 99. There is nothing (says Mr. Bruce) incredible, or even very extraordinary, in Lettice’s age; but even her years will produce curious results if applied to the subject of possible transmission of knowledge through few links. I will give one example: “Dr. Johnson, who was born in 1709, might have known a person who had seen the Countess Lettice. If there are not now (1857), there were amongst us within the last three or four years, persons who knew Dr. Johnson. There might, therefore, be only two links between ourselves and the Countess Lettice, who saw Henry VIII.” Mr. John Pavin Philips writes from Haverfordwest: “A friend of mine, now (1857) in his 80th year, knew an old woman resident in his parish who remembered her grandmother, who saw Cromwell when he was in Pembrokeshire, in 1648. I myself, when a student in Edinburgh in 1837, knew a centenarian lady, named Butler, who well recollected being taken by her mother to witness the public entry of Prince Charles Edward into the city in 1745.” And in Haverfordwest might be seen daily walking, in 1857, in perfect health, a man who was born four years previous to the death of George II. In the News Letter of June 1st, 1724, Bodl. Mss., Rawl. C., it is related, that on the King’s birthday, as the nobility and others of distinction passed through Pall Mall to Court at St. James’s, there sat in the street one Elinor Stuart, being 124 years old. She had kept a linen-shop at Kendal, and had nine children living at the time King Charles I. was beheaded, and was undone by adhering to the royal cause. “She is reckoned,” says the account (Jane Skrimshaw, who was now dead, being 128), “the oldest woman in London.” Margaret Mapps, of Eaton, near Leominster, who died in 1800, aged 109, had so retentive a memory, that to her last hours she could relate many incidents which she had witnessed in the reign of Queen Anne. In 1858 died Mrs. Milward, of Blackheath, at the age of 102. She was, consequently, born four years previous to the accession of George III.; she saw the separation of the American colonies from the mother country; the three French revolutions, and the great war with France; she well remembered the London riots of 1780, and was placed in some jeopardy in Hyde-park in one of the incidents. Jane Forrester, of Cumberland, is stated in the Public Advertiser, March 9th, 1766, as then living in her 138th year: she remembered Cromwell’s siege of Carlisle, in 1646; and in 1762 she gave evidence in a Chancery-suit of an estate having been enjoyed by the ancestors of the then heir 101 years. One Evans, of Spitalfields, who died 1780, is stated to have reached the age of 139 years: he remembered the execution of Charles I., at which time he was 7 years old. In the London newspapers of November 7th, 1788, is recorded the celebration of the centenary of the Revolution, at which was present a person who remembered that glorious event; he was 112 years old, and belonged to the French Hospital, Old Street-road, where were then ten persons whose ages together were 1000 years. In 1826 there died at Corby, near Carlisle, aged 102, one Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died on December 18th, 1855, aged 96, among many accomplishments possessed a most retentive memory; and his sweep of recollections was very wide. He remembered when one of the Rebels’ heads remained on Temple Bar; when schoolboys chased butterflies in the fields in cocked hats; when gentlemen universally wore wigs and swords; when Ranelagh was in all its glory, and ladies going thither had head-dresses so preposterously high that they had to sit on stools placed in the bottom of the coach; when Garrick crowded the theatre, Reynolds crowded the lecture-room, and Johnson crowded the club; he had heard the Duke of York relate how he and his brother George, when young men, were robbed by footpads on Hay-hill, Berkeley-street; he had shaken hands with John Wilkes, dined with Lafayette, Condorcet, &c. at Paris, before the great Revolution began, and been present at Warren Hastings’ trial in Westminster Hall; he had seen Lady Hamilton go through her “attitudes” before the Prince of Wales, and Lord Nelson spin a teetotum with his one hand for the amusement of children.—R. Carruthers. Mr. Peter Cunningham noted, a few days after the death of our Poet: “When Rogers made his appearance as a poet, Lord Byron was unborn—and Byron has been dead thirty-one years! When Percy Bysshe Shelley was born, Rogers was in his 30th year—and Shelley has been dead nearly thirty-four years! When Keats was born, The Pleasures of Memory was looked upon as a standard poem—and Keats has been dead thirty-five years! When this century commenced, the man who died but yesterday, and in the latter half too of the century, had already numbered as many years as Burns and Byron had numbered when they died. Mr. Rogers was born before the following English poets: Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Bloomfield, Cunningham, Hogg, James Montgomery, Shelley, Keats, Wilson, Tom Hood, Kirk White, Lamb, Joanna Baillie, Felicia Hemans, L. E. L.; and he outlived them all.” On April 24th, 1858, died Mr. James Nolan, at Auchindrane, Carlow, Ireland, aged 115 years and 9 months. There is something more interesting than his being the oldest subject of her Majesty, who had lived in the reigns of five sovereigns of England; and no doubt it is curious to be carried back by two lives—Mr. Nolan and his father—to the reign of Charles II., and almost to the time of Cromwell. Here is a remarkable instance: Commander Pickernell, R.N., who died April 20th, 1859, aged 87, knew well in his youth a man who was a soldier encamped on Hounslowheath The venerable President of Magdalen College, Oxford, Dr. Routh, who died 1855, in his hundredth year, brought up old memories of times and men long passed away. Dr. Routh had known Dr. Theophilus Lee, the contemporary of Addison; had seen Dr. Johnson “in his brown wig scrambling up the steps of University College;” and had been told by a lady of her aunt who had been present when Charles II. walked round the parks at Oxford. Dr. Routh had maintained an immediate and personal connexion with the University of Oxford for upwards of 80 years; and his long life supplied many instructive links between the present and the past. He was born in the reign of King George II., before the beginning of the Seven Years’ War; before India was conquered by Clive, or Canada by Wolfe; before the United States ever dreamt of independence; and before Pitt had impressed the greatness of his own character on the policy of Britain. The life of this college student comprehended three most important periods in the history of the world. Martin Routh saw the last years of the old state of society which introduced the political deluge; he saw the deluge itself—the great French Revolution, with all its catastrophes of thrones and opinions; and he lived to see the more stirring but not less striking changes which forty years of peace had engendered. It is therefore not a little curious to read of such a man, that the times on which his thoughts chiefly dwelt were those of the Stuarts; which is not, however, altogether surprising, as he might himself have shaken hands with the Pretender. This Prince did not die till young Routh was ten years of age; so that, if accident had put the chance in his way, he might easily have had an interview with the representative of James II. 38. See Notes and Queries, 2d series, Nos. 51 and 53. 39. Ibid. No. 58. 40. W. D. Macray; Notes and Queries, 2d series, No. 23. 41. Notes and Queries, 2d series, No. 169. 42. Condensed from the Times journal. LONGEVITY IN FAMILIES.The long life of different members of the same family is remarkable. In 1836, Mrs. H. P., residing near the Edgeware-road, attained her 103d year: she had three sisters,—one 107, another 105; and the other, who died about 1834, 100. Mr. Bailey records the death of Widow Stephenson, of Wolverton, Durham, in 1816, aged 104: her mother lived to be 106, two sisters 106 and 107, and a brother 97; making an aggregate of 519 years as the age of these five relatives. Edward Simon, 81 years a dock-labourer in Liverpool, died 1821, aged 101: his mother lived to 103; his father 101; and a brother 104. Gilbert Wakefield states that his wife’s great-grandfather and great-grandmother’s matrimonial connexion lasted seventy-five years: they died nearly at the same time, she at the age of 98, he at the age of 108. He was out hunting a short time before his death. His portrait is in the hall of Mr. Legh, of Lyme. Mary Tench, of Cromlin, Ireland, who died 1790, aged 100, was of aged parents; her father attained 104, and her mother 96; her uncle reached 110 and she left two sisters, whose aggregate ages made 170. In the year 1811, within four miles of the house at Alderbury formerly occupied by Parr, there died, in the month of September, four persons, whose ages were 97, 80, 96, and 97. There were then living in the neighbourhood a man aged 100, and two others of 90. The Costello family, county Kilkenny, lived to very great ages. On June 12, 1824, died Mary Costello, aged 102; her mother died at precisely the same age; her grandmother at 120; her great-grandmother exceeded 125: long before her death, she had to be rocked in a cradle, like an infant. Mary Costello’s brother lived beyond 100 years; and when 90, cut down half an acre of grass in a day. In Appleby churchyard is a tombstone in memory of The Countess of Mornington, who died in 1831, attained the age of 90: her eldest son, the Marquis Wellesley, ennobled for his administration in India, reached 82; his brother, Lord Maryborough, 83; Lady Maryborough, 91; and their brother, the Great Duke of Wellington, 83. We possess a small portrait of Lady Mary Irvine, aunt to Lady Maryborough, painted in her 82d year; the face is without a wrinkle, but of riant beauty. The London bankers, Joseph and William Joseph Denison, exceeded 80; and the sister of the latter, Dowager Marchioness of Conyngham, 90. Lady Blakiston, died, November 1862, in her 102d year; and her eldest son, Sir Matthew Blakiston, died December following, in his 82d year. “On 8th April 1860, Mr. S. Cronesberry died at Farmer’s Bridge, aged 99. His grandfather died in 97th year; his father died in 97th year; his mother in 98th year.” Archibald, 9th Earl of Dundonald, died 1831, aged 83; and his son, 10th Earl, 1860, reached 82: both in the naval service, and distinguished by their scientific attainments. 43. Dublin Warder, 1824. 44. Letter of Baron Alderson, in his Life, by his Son, date Feb. 19, 1833. 45. Kilkenny Moderator. FEMALE LONGEVITY.One of the most celebrated personages in the history of Female Longevity is the Countess of Desmond, who is usually said to have died early in the 17th century, aged 140 years. Bacon, in his Natural History, describes her as “the old Countess of Desmond, who lived till she was sevenscore years old, that she did dentire (produce teeth) twice or thrice.” Sir Walter Raleigh, in his History of the World, says: “I myself knew the old Countess of Desmond of Inchiquin, in Munster, who lived in the year 1589, and many years since, who was married in Edward IV.’s time, and held her jointure from all the Earls of Desmond since Of Margaret Patten, stated to have died 136 and 138 years old, a curious portrait was found at Glasgow, amongst some family papers, in 1853. She was born in the parish of Locknugh, near Paisley, in Scotland, and is described beneath the portrait as “now living in the workhouse of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, aged 138.” And in the Boardroom of St. Margaret’s workhouse is another portrait of Margaret (there stated to be 136), the gift of the overseers of the parish in 1737. The old woman was buried in the burial-ground of the Broadway church, now Christ-church, Westminster, where a stone is inscribed, “Near this place lieth Margaret Patten, who died June 26, 1739, in the Parish Workhouse, aged 136.” “She was brought to England to prepare Scotch broth for King James II.; but owing to the abdication of that monarch, fell into poverty, and died in St. Margaret’s workhouse. Her body was followed to the grave by the parochial authorities and many of the principal inhabitants, while the children sung a hymn before it reached its last resting-place.” The following instances of long widowhoods are interesting: the widow of Thomas, second Lord Lyttleton, who died in 1779, survived his lordship in a state of widowhood sixty-one years, dying in 1840, aged 97. The widow of David Garrick died in 1822, in the same house, on the Adelphi-terrace, wherein her celebrated husband died forty-three years previously. We remember a small etching of the old lady appearing in the print-shops just after her death, portraying her characteristic dignified deportment. Among the legacies bequeathed to her husband’s family was a service of pewter used by him when a bachelor, and having the name of Garrick engraven on it. The widow of Charles James Fox, the statesman, died in 1842, aged 96, having survived her husband thirty-six years. Amelia Opie, the amiable novelist, died in 1853, in her 85th year, having survived her husband, the painter, forty-six years. He painted a remarkable picture of Mrs. Opie,—two portraits, full-face and profile, upon the same canvas; they are said to be faithful likenesses. Some years since, writes the editor of the Quarterly Review, “we beheld the strange sight of an old woman, aged 102, bent double, crooning over the fire, and nursing in her lap an infant a few days old. The infant was the grandchild of the old woman’s grandchild. The only remarkable circumstance in the veteran’s history was, that she had nursed Wordsworth in his infancy. She had lived the greater part of her life in Westmoreland, near the poet’s residence, and there her descendants had been chiefly born and lived.” Here are a few instances of women of remarkable talent attaining great ages: Caroline Lucretia Herschel, who discovered seven comets, and passed years of nights as amanuensis to her brother, Sir William Herschel, in his astronomical labours, attained the Miss Linwood, whose Needlework Pictures were exhibited nearly sixty years, died in 1844, at the age of 90. No needlework of ancient or modern times has ever surpassed these productions. The collection consisted of sixty-four pictures, mostly of large or gallery size; the finest work, from the “Salvator Mundi,” by Carlo Dolci, was bequeathed by Miss Linwood to Queen Victoria; for this picture 3000 guineas had been refused. Dr. Webster, F.R.S., who takes great interest in records of Longevity, in 1860 contributed to the AthenÆum a copy of the certificate of birth of a lady in her 100th year, living at Hampstead, namely, the surviving sister of the authoress Miss Joanna Baillie, who died 1851, aged 89. This document is as follows: Copy of an entry in a separate register of the Presbytery of Hamilton, under the head “Shotts.”—That Mr. James Baillie had a daughter named Agnes, born 24th September 1760, attested and signed at Hamilton the 25th day of November 1760, in presence of the Presbytery.—Signed, James Baillie; John Kirk, Clerk; Patrick Maxwell, Moderator. In the same year, 1859, died Lady Morgan, the novelist, at 76; Leigh Hunt, the poet and littÉrateur, at 75; Washington Irving, at 77; and Thomas de Quincey, at 76. Lady Charlotte Bury, the novelist, attained the age of 88, retaining her beauty and conversational accomplishments to the last; she died 1861. The Dowager Countess of Hardwicke, who died in 1858, in her long life brought points of time together which, at first, seem separated by impassable spaces. She was born in 1763, and was consequently 95 years of age; but her father, the Earl of Balcarres, having been advanced in years at the time of her birth, their two lives extend back to before the beginning of the eighteenth century; and it was strange to hear, in 1858, that a person just dead could speak of her father as having been “out in the Fifteen” (1715) with Lord Derwentwater and Forster, and having been begged off by the great Duke of Marlborough. Yet such was the fact; and not only so, but having been born in 1649, the three lives of grandfather, son, and granddaughter stretched over a period of 200 years; and, when her grandmother was married, Then there was Viscountess Keith, who died at about the same age, 95, and who had been “the plaything often, when a child,” of Johnson, and who received his last blessing on his death-bed. She was the daughter of Mrs. Thrale, and was a link that directly connected us with the Literary Club at its foundation, all the members of which she must have seen, and most of whom she was old enough to know well as a grown-up young lady. Lady Louisa Stuart, the daughter of the Marquess of Bute, actually remembered her grandmother, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who died in 1762. She herself died 1851, aged 94, and was the intimate friend of Scott, and one of the few original depositaries of the Waverley secret. And Mary Berry, aged 89, and her sister Agnes, 88, both died in 1852, having lived in the best of London society for sixty years. For the amusement of these ladies, Horace Walpole wrote his most delightful Reminiscences. 46. History of the World, book i. chap. 5. 47. Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. i. 48. Walcott’s Westminster, p. 238. 49. Eironnach; Notes and Queries, No. 215. LONGEVITY AND DIET.It may now be as well to glance at the modes of living of a few of the patriarchal folks. Cornaro, who is one of the penates of healthful longevity, was born at Venice in 1464, of a noble family. In early life he injured his health by intemperance, and by indulging his propensity to anger; but he succeeded in acquiring such a command over himself, and in adopting such a system of temperance, as to Thomas Parr Good wholesome labour was his exercise, Down with the lamb, and with the lark would rise; In wise and toiling sweat he spent the day, And to his team he whistled time away; The cock his night-clock, and till day was done, His watch and chief sun-dial was the sun. He was of old Pythagoras’ opinion, That new cheese was most wholesome with an onion; Coarse meslin bread; and for his daily swig, Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey and whig; Sometimes metheglin, and, by fortune happy, He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy, Cider or perry, when he did repair To a Whitson ale, wake, wedding, or a fair, Or when in Christmas-time he was a guest, At his good landlord’s house among the rest; Else he had little leisure-time to waste, Or at the alehouse buff-cup ale to taste; His physic was good butter, which the soil Of Salop yields, more sweet than Candy-oil; And garlic he esteemed above the rate Of Venice treacle, or best mithridate; The air was good and temperate where he dwelt; Thus living within bounds of Nature’s laws, Of his long-lasting life may be some cause. Taylor thus describes the person of Parr: From head to heel, his body had all over A quick-set, thick-set, natural hairy cover. The Vegetarians maintain that their system of living conduces highly to longevity. We find in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1774, this recorded instance: “At Brussels, Elizabeth de Val, aged 103, who was remarkable for never having eaten a bit of meat in her life.” An advocate of vegetable diet adduces the Norwegian and Russian peasantry as the most remarkable instances of extreme longevity: “The last returns of the Greek Church population of the Russian empire give (in the table of the deaths of the male sex) more than one thousand above 100 years of age, many between 140 and 150.... Slaves in the West Indies are recorded from 130 to 150 years of age.” Widow Rogers, of Penzance, Cornwall, who died 1779, aged 118, for the last sixty years lived entirely on vegetable diet. Among the Pythagoreans of our time should be mentioned Sir Richard Phillips, who from his twelfth year conceived an abhorrence of the slaughter of animals for food; and from that period to his death, at the age of 72, he lived entirely on vegetable products, enjoying such robust health that no stranger could have suspected his studious and sedentary habits. One Wilson, of Worlingworth, Suffolk, who died 1782, The Hon. Mrs. Watkins, of Glamorganshire, who died 1790, aged 110, for her last thirty years lived principally on potatoes. The year before her death she came from Glamorgan to London to see Mrs. Siddons play, and attended the theatre nine nights; and one morning she mounted to the Whispering-gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is rarely that table-wits attain such longevity as did Captain Morris, the Anacreon of the Beef-steak Club, who wrote lyrics at the age of 90. He died three years afterwards. He was of short stature, and usually wore a buff waistcoat, such as he apostrophised in one of his latest lyrics, “The old Whig Poet to his old Buff Waistcoat.” He lies in the churchyard of Betchworth, Surrey,—his grave simply marked by a head and foot stone, 1838. Civic annals present few such instances of long life as that of Richard Clark, Chamberlain of London, who died 1831, in his 92d year. He was one of the latest of the contemporaries of Dr. Johnson, whom he had known from his 15th year: when sheriff, he took the Doctor to a “Judges’ Dinner” at the Old Bailey, the judges being Blackstone and Eyre. In the autumn of 1831 died the Rev. Dr. Shaw, aged 83, of Chesley, Somerset, said to have been the last surviving friend of Dr. Johnson. Few persons addicted to riotous living attain great ages. A remarkable exception is recorded of George Kirton, Esq., of Oxcrop Hall, Yorkshire, who died in 1762, aged 125. He was a stanch foxhunter, and hunted till after he was 80; thenceforth, till his hundredth year, he attended the “breaking cover” in his single chair. He was a heavy drinker till within a few years of his death. Thomas Whittington, who died at Hillingdon, Middlesex, in 1804, aged 104, retained his faculties to the last, and could walk two or three miles; yet he was a great drinker, gin being the only fluid he took into his stomach, and of this a pint and a half daily, until a fortnight of his death. He remembered William III. and Queen Anne; and in 1745 he conveyed troops and baggage from Uxbridge to London. His father died at exactly the same age (104) as the son, and both lie in Hillingdon churchyard. 50. 51. The portrait of Sir Richard Phillips as Sheriff, painted by Saxon, shows him as above described. The picture is of gallery size, and in the possession of his grandson and representative, Mr. Bacon Phillips, M.R.C.S., of Brighton. The bust of Sir Richard, by Turnerelli, conveys a similar personnel. LONGEVITY AND LOCALITIES.With respect to the atmosphere most favourable to health and longevity, Sir John Sinclair says, “More depends upon a current of pure air than mere elevation. There is no place in Scotland, proportionably with its population, where a greater number of aged people are to be found than in the neighbourhood of Loch Lomond.” The purest atmosphere, Sir John maintains, is in the neighbourhood of a small stream running over a rocky or pebbly bottom. Mr. Thomas Bailey, in his Records of Longevity, states that “Nottinghamshire has the driest atmosphere of any district in England, the depth of rain which falls there being something like 50 per cent below what falls in Lancashire, Devonshire, and one or two of the northern counties;” yet the records show that it enjoys no superiority, in point of the longevity of its inhabitants, over those moister districts. Hence it is concluded that moderately moist air is most conducive to great age. The reason Hufeland assigns for this is, that moist air, being in part already saturated, has less attractive power over bodies,—that is to say, consumes them less. Besides, in a moist atmosphere there is always more uniformity of temperature, fewer rapid revolutions of heat being possible than in a dry atmosphere. Lastly, an atmosphere somewhat moist keeps the muscular tissue of the body longer pliable, whereas that which is dry or arid brings on much sooner rigidity of the muscles and vessels of the body, and all the characteristics of old age. It is this very dry air, joined with the heat of the sun, which gives to the dried and shrivelled skin of the face of some old men, in the felicitous humour of Charles Dickens, “the appearance of a walnut-shell.” We now proceed to cite instances of Long Life from various localities. On the fly-leaves of a book named Long Livers, published in 1722, were written the following notes of several old persons in Yorkshire: Ursula Chicken, at Holderness, 120 years in 1718, and she lived some years later. In Firbeck churchyard were buried a brother and son, one 113 and the other 109 years old, both of whom had lived in caves at Roche Abbey. Mr. Philip, of Thorner, The register of Middleton Tyas, adjoining, contains, in sixteen years, entries of 230 persons buried, of whom seventy-six had reached the age of 70 years or upwards. In 1813, of fifteen deceased, three were 90, 91, and 92; in 1815 a person died 97; and thirty-three of the number specified were 80 years old and upwards; and in the churchyard are buried two persons of 103 and 101 years. But within the last thirty-five years instances of longevity in this parish, once so common, form the exception. Mr. Durrant Cooper, F.S.A., has communicated to Notes and Queries, No. 212, these interesting records from the burial register of Skelton-in-Cleveland, in the North Riding of Yorkshire: Out of 799 persons buried between 1813 and 1852, no less than 263, or nearly one-third, attained the age of 70. Of these, two were respectively 101. Nineteen others were 90 years of age and upwards, viz. one 97, one 96, one 95, four 94, one 93, five 92, three 91, and three 90. Between the ages of 80 and 90 there died 109; and between 70 and 80 there died 133. In one page of the register, containing eight names, six were above 80, and in another five were above 70. In the parish of Skelton there was then living a man named Moon, 104 years old, who was blind, but managed a small farm till nearly or quite 100; and a blacksmith, named Robinson Cook, aged 98, who worked at his trade until within six months of this age. In the chapelry of Brotton, adjoining Skelton township, the longevity was even more remarkable. Out of 346 persons buried since the new register came into force in 1813, down to Oct. 1, 1853, more than one-third attained the age of 70. One Betty Thompson, who died in 1834, was 101; nineteen were more than 90, of whom one was 98, two 97, three 95, one 93, four 92, five 91, and three 90; forty-four died between 80 and 90 years old, and fifty-seven between 70 and 80, of whom thirty-one were 75 and upwards. That celibacy did not lessen the chance of life was proved by a bachelor named Simpson, who died at 82, and his maiden sister at 91. George Stephenson, a farm-labourer, of Runald-Kirk, near Barnard-Castle, Durham, who died 1812, aged 105, was a very early riser; he used to reprove (for lying a-bed) his daughter and her husband, both about 70 years of age, but who rose before six o’clock in the morning,—George saying, “if they would not work while they were young, what would they do when they became old?” Mr. Carruthers, of Inverness, whose evidence is entitled to respect, wrote in 1836, that “the patriarchs of the glen of Strathcarron have been gathered to their fathers. The primitive manners of the olden time are disappearing even in that remote corner, and human life is dwindling down to its ordinary brief limits.” This experience is the converse of the opinion that civilisation and refinement tend to lengthen life. The Western Isles of Scotland have long been noted for persons of great age. Martin describes a male native of Jura, who had kept 180 Christmas festivals in his own house, and this marvellous account was confirmed to Pennant; but the evidence is not given, and the man died fifty years before Martin’s visit. Buchanan, in his History of Shetland, gives an account of one Laurence, a Shetlander, who lived to 140; Dr. Derham, in his Physico-Theology, confirms this, and Martin received from Laurence’s family particulars of his fishing to the last year of his life. At Orkney Martin heard of a man aged 112; and that one William Muir, of Westra, lived to be near 140. Tarquis M’Leod, near Stornoway, in the island of Lewis, died in 1787, aged 113; he had fought at Killiecrankie, Sheriffmuir, and Culloden, under the Stuarts. In the Aberdeen Journal we find this evidence: Died, at Strichen, Widow Reid, aged 81; and in the following fortnight, Christian Grant, aged 97 years. The surviving A well-authenticated instance is that of Mrs. Elizabeth Gray, who died at Edinburgh on the 2d of April 1856, at the age of 108, having been born in May 1748, as chronicled in the register of her father’s parish. Her mother attained 96, and two of her sisters died at 94 and 96 respectively. In 1808 died the Hon. Mrs. Hay Mackenzie, of Cromartie, at the age of 103. The well-known Countess Dowager of Cork died in 1840, having just completed her 94th year; she was to the last accustomed to dine out every day when she had not company at home. Mr. Francis Brokesby, in 1711, wrote of a woman then living near the Tower of London, aged about 130, and who remembered Queen Elizabeth; to the last there was not a gray hair on her head, and she never lost memory or judgment. Mr. Brokesby also records the death, about 1660, of the wife of a labouring man at Hedgerow, in Cheshire; she is said to have attained the age of 140. Reflecting upon this record, Mr. Robert Chambers observes, with poetic feeling, “When we think of such things, the ordinary laws of nature seem to have undergone some partial relaxation; and the dust of ancient times almost becomes living flesh before our eyes.” We confess to the weakness of being occasionally depressed in the society of some very aged persons. We remember Louis PouchÉe to have died about twenty years since, considerably above 100 years old: his voice was a childish treble, and there was at last a sort of forced gaiety in his manner which was any thing but cheerful; his piping of “I’ve kissed and I’ve prattled with fifty fair maids” was a lugubrious rendering of that lively lyric. In White’s Suffolk Directory for 1844, the following living instances are recorded. “W. A. Shuldham, Esq., resides at the Hall, in which, on July 18, 1843, he celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his birthday. Mrs. Susan Godbold, Here is an instance of remarkable memory. George Kelson (”the Woodman,” in illustration of Cowper’s poem) died near Bath in 1820, aged 101; he gave evidence before the Commissioners of Public Charities, deposing, with great clearness, to facts which had occurred ninety years before his examination. The parish register of Bremhill, Wiltshire, records: “Buried, September the 29th, 1696, Edith Goldie, Grace Young, Elizabeth Wiltshire. Their united ages make 300 years.” Two centuries ago, the now sleepy town of Woodstock, Oxon., was proverbial for its long livers. The Rev. John Ward, Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon, in his Diary, 1648-9, records: “Old Bryan, of Woodstock, a taylor by profession, and a fiddler by present practice, of age 90, yet very lively, and will travail well. George Green and Cripps, each 90, very hard labourers. Thomas Cock, alias Hawkins, 112 years of age when he died. Woodstock men frequently long lived. Goody Jones, of Woodstock, and old Bryan, two such old people as it is thought England does not afford, nor two such travailors of their age.” In 1637 there was living in Blackboy-lane, Oxford, “Mother George,” who, although 120 years of age, could thread a fine needle without the help of spectacles. Between February and May 1767, there died in Oxford seven persons whose ages together amount to 616, viz. 88, 93, 86, 87, 90, 82, and 90. In the same year is recorded the death of Francis Ange, in Maryland, aged 130; he was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, remembered the death of King Charles I., and left England soon after. The heads of Colleges in Oxford have frequently attained great ages: we have mentioned Dr. Routh, President Midhurst, in Sussex, must be a healthy locality; for, according to the Dublin Chronicle, December 2, 1788, the town, then containing only 140 houses and cottages, had seventy-eight inhabitants whose ages were above 70; thirty-two were 80 and upwards; and five were between 90 and 100; and the seventy-eight persons, except four, were in some business or occupation. Wye, near Ashford, Kent, is another noted locality for long life; the ages of 70, 80, and even 90, being by no means rare in the parish register. In 1800 twenty-two men died in England and Wales who had reached or passed the age of 100, and forty-seven women. The oldest woman, 111 years of age, died in Glamorganshire. With the men there was a tie: a man aged 107 died in Hampshire, and another of the same age in Pembrokeshire. Four of the centenarians died in London, two others at Camberwell, one also at Greenwich, and one at Lewisham. More men died in the year than women; but of the 595 persons who had reached the age of 95 or upwards before they died, nearly two-thirds were women. Great longevity is attained in some of the murky streets, lanes, and alleys of London. In 1767 died Widow Prossen, of Oxford-road, in her 102d year, having passed nearly her whole life among old clothes in a pawnbroker’s shop, accumulating a large fortune. In the same year died her neighbour, Benjamin Perryn, aged 103. In 1767 also we find Widow Waters, of Saffron-hill, dying at the age of 103; and one Wood, of Markam-court, Chandos-street, at 100. In 1846 there died in grimy Holywell-street, Strand, one Harris, a Jew clothesman, who had lived in the same street more than seventy years: his wife died a few years before him, at the age of 93; and his eldest son was 73 at the time of his father’s death. In 1780 there died in St. Martin’s workhouse Widow Pettit, aged 114; and next year, Widow Parker, of White-Hart-yard, Drury-lane, aged 108, with all her faculties unimpaired. Occasionally we find very old persons almost growing to the spot on which they were born. In 1780 died at Englefield, Hants, James Hopper, an agricultural labourer, aged 108, who had never quitted his native Englefield even for a few miles. And in 1799 died Mr. Humphries, a carpenter, born at Newington, Surrey, aged 102, and who would never go more than two or three miles from the house in which he was born. One Trundle, a farmer of Rotherhithe, who died 1766, aged 100, had lived in the same house eighty-two years. Sometimes this takes the turn of misanthropic seclusion: Christopher Tarran, of Sutton, near Richmond, Yorkshire, who died 1827, aged 93, shut himself up in his chamber, from which he never stirred during the last twenty years of his life, and only twice admitted any one into the room. In 1811 there died at Desford, Leicestershire, one John Upton, aged 100; he had been a worsted framework-knitter for one firm in Leicester for ninety-three years. Widow Richardson, of Holwell, Leicestershire, who died 1806, aged 97, kept school in the parish 75 years, and was never five miles from home during her long life. We remember two stalwart millers, brothers, Joseph and John Saunders, aged 79 and 73, born at Pixham-mill, and then of Pixham-house, hard by, near the foot of Boxhill, Surrey, where they died, at the above ages. 52. Edward Hailstone, Horton Hall; Notes and Queries, 2d series, No. 230. 53. Condensed from Chambers’s Book of Days, vol. i. 54. Britton’s Wilts. vol. iii. 55. Walks in Oxford, 1817. 56. Select. Gent. Mag. iv. 57. Bailey’s Records of Longevity, p. 249. LONGEVITY OF CLASSES.Deep-thinking philosophers have at all times been distinguished by their great age, especially when their philosophy was occupied in the study of Nature, and afforded them the divine pleasure of discovering new and important truths,—the purest enjoyment; a beneficial exaltation of ourselves, and a kind of restoration which may be ranked among We find also many instances of long life among schoolmasters, so that one might almost believe that continual intercourse with youth may contribute something towards our renovation and support. But poets and artists, in short all those fortunate mortals whose principal occupation leads Among the clergy are several remarkable instances. The venerable Bishop Hough, the Cato of Sir Thomas Bernard’s Comforts of Old Age, through an extraordinary degree of health of body and mind, attained the age of 92. “Blessed be God for his great mercies to me! I have to-day entered my ninetieth year, with less infirmity than I could have presumed to hope, and certainly with a degree of calmness and tranquillity of mind, which is gradually increasing as I daily approach the end of my pilgrimage. I think, indeed, that my life must now be but of short duration; and, I thank God, the thought gives me no uneasiness.” Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, after he had been deprived and ejected from Lambeth, for refusing to take any new oaths to William and Mary, retired to his paternal estate, of 50l. a year, at Fresingfield, in Suffolk, his birthplace. He was then approaching fourscore; and here he was visited by Bishop Hough, in 1693. I found him (says the Bishop) working in his garden, and taking advantage of a shower of rain which had fallen to transplant some lettuces. I was struck with the profusion of his vegetables, the beauty and luxuriance of his fruit-trees, and the richness and fragrance of his flowers, and noticed the taste which had directed every thing. “You must not compliment too hastily (says he) on the directions which I have given. Almost all you see is the work of my own hands. My old woman does the weeding, and John mows my turf and digs for me; but all the nicer work,—the sowing, grafting, budding, transplanting, and the like,—I trust to no other hand but my own; so long, at least, as my health will allow me to enjoy so pleasing an occupation. And in good sooth (added he) the fruits here taste more sweet, and the flowers have a richer perfume, than they had at Lambeth.” I looked up to our deprived metropolitan with more respect, and thought his gardening-dress shed more splendour over him, than ever his robes and lawn-sleeves could have done when he was the first subject in this great kingdom. The Rev. Mr. Sampson, Incumbent of Keyham, Leicestershire, who died 1655, is stated by Thoresby to have held the The Rev. R. Lufkin, Rector of Ufford, Suffolk, died September 1678, aged 110, having preached the Sunday before he died. Morton, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, who died 1695, aged 95, constantly rose at four o’clock to his studies when he was 80 years old; he usually lay upon a straw bed, and seldom exceeded one meal a day. Here are two lengthy incumbencies: “1753, December 22. Rev. Mr. Braithwaite, of Carlisle, [died] aged 110. He had been 100 years in the cathedral, having commenced singing-boy in the year 1652.” “1763. Rev. Peter Alley (Rector of Donamow, Ireland, 73 years), [died] in the 111th year of his age. He did his own duty till within a few days of his death; he was twice married, and had thirty-three children.” The Rev. John Bedwell, Rector of Odstock, near Salisbury, according to the Bishop’s registry, held that benefice 73 years; and, by the parish register, died at the age of 108. The Rev. S. W. Warneford, the munificent benefactor to colleges and schools, died 1855, aged 92; and Maltby, Bishop of Durham, 1859, at 90. Soldiers who survive the chances of war are proverbial for long life: there are several instances recorded in the Chelsea Hospital burial-ground. The lists of the survivors of England’s great battles present instances ranging from 100 to 120 years. “History only mentions a single man who, at such an advanced age, commanded an army in the field; and that was Dandolo, the Doge of Venice, who was 95 years of age, and almost blind, when he commanded the Venetians in the great Crusade, and who was the first to enter Constantinople at the time of the assault on it in 1203. Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, was 83 years old when he commanded in Guienne, in 1453; but he was killed in the same year at the battle of Chatillon. Fuentes, General of the Spanish Quakers attain great ages. In the Obituary of the Friend Magazine, 1860, we find the following ages of some deceased members of the Society of Friends: 84, 84, 85, 85, 85, 86, 86, 87, 87, 88, 88, 89, 89, 89, 91, 91, 91, 91, 91, 91, 92, 92, 93, 93—making a total of 2128 years, with an average for each life of rather more than 88½ years. Fifty lives in the same period give 4258 years, with an average of 85 per life. The average duration of life in the Society of Friends during 1860 was 58 years and 6 months; but one girl died under 6 months old; five girls and thirteen boys—in all eighteen out of the 324, or 5½ per cent—did not reach the age of one year. Hard-workers are often long livers. Hobson, the noted Cambridge carrier, died on New-year’s Day, 1630-1, it is said in his 86th year. His visits to London were suspended on account of the Plague, and during this cessation he died; whereupon Milton remarked that Death would never have hit him had he continued dodging it backwards and forwards between Cambridge and the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate. One John King, of Nokes, Oxon, died in 1766, at the age of 130: he was a farm-labourer, and at the age of 128 walked to and from the market at Oxford—twelve miles. One Wilks, a farm-labourer, of Stourbridge, Worcestershire, who died 1777, aged 109, was suspected by his ignorant neighbours of having purchased the secret of long life from a witch with whom he had become acquainted. An Irish fisherman, Jonas Warren, who died 1787, Mr. Bailey states, at 167, had for ninety-five years drawn his subsistence from the ocean. Another fisherman, Worrell, of Dunwich, Suffolk, died 1789, aged 119, having fished till he was 107. Of Ephraim Pratt, who was living at Shaftesbury, U.S., in 1803, aged 116 years, the Rev. Timothy Dwight relates that he had mown grass 101 years successively. He drank large quantities of milk, and in his latter years it was almost his sole sustenance. His descendants, to the fifth generation, it was publicly stated, numbered more than 1500 persons. Margaret Woods, of Great Waltham, who died 1797, aged 100, had, with her ancestors, lived in the service of one Essex family for 400 years. Here is well-authenticated evidence of long service from Sussex. At Battle is the gravestone of Isaac Ingoll, who died April 2, 1798, aged 120 years; his register is to be seen in the parish, and he lived 101 years in the service of the Webster family, of Battle Abbey, having entered it at the age of 19. Philip Palfreman, who had been box-keeper at the first Covent Garden Theatre in Garrick’s time, died in 1768, aged 100: he almost lived in the theatre, and by his thrift saved a fortune of 10,000l. In 1845 died William Ward, aged 98, of the Sun Fire Office, London, where he had filled a situation seventy years. Jockeys, from the severe effects of training, are proverbially short-lived; yet John Scott, of Brighton, once a jockey, reached the age of 96. Great pedestrian feats have been performed by very old men. Mr. M’Leod, of Inverness, who died 1790, aged 102, two years previously walked from Inverness to London (five hundred miles) in nineteen days: he had served in Marlborough’s wars. On May 28, 1802, a lunatic named James Coyle, 47 years old, was admitted a patient into St. Patrick’s (Swift’s) Hospital, Dublin: he continued there upwards of fifty-eight years, and eventually died July 17, 1860, at the age of 105. There can surely be no mistake as to this great age. One John Minniken, of Maryport, Cumberland, who died 1793, aged 112, was remarkable for the fast growth and profusion of his hair, which he sold, in successive croppings, to a hairdresser of the town, for a penny a day, during the remainder of his life; and more than seventy wigs were made of Minniken’s hair. Among aged persons of diminutive stature was Mary Jones, of Wem, Salop, who died 1773, aged 100: she was only 2 feet 8 inches in height. Elspeth Watson, of Perth, who died 1800, aged 115, did not exceed 2 feet 9 inches in height, but was bulky in person. Old age can rarely withstand intense grief. John Tice, of Hagley, Worcestershire, having recovered from a fall out of a tree when he was 80 years old, and from being much burned when he was 100, after the death of his patron, Lord Lyttleton, became so depressed in spirits, that he took to his bed and died. Sir Francis Burdett had withstood the storms and tumults of political life for more than half a century, and had reached the age of 74, when his dear wife died, Jan. 10, 1844: from that instant Sir Francis refused food or nourishment of any kind, and he died of intense grief on the 23d of the same month: both were buried in the same vault, in the same hour, on the same day, in the church of Ramsbury, Wilts. Cardinal Fleury, the great French minister, who died in 1743, had attained the age of 90. For fourteen years he essentially contributed to the peace and prosperity of France; but the three last years of his administration were unfortunate. On the death of the Emperor Charles XI., in 1740, without male issue, a war ensued respecting the imperial succession, the calamitous events of which preyed on the Cardinal’s mind and occasioned his death. Sir John Floyer, Physician to Queen Anne, seems to have found the golden mean of happiness. He died in Dr. Cheyne, the Scottish physician, of this period, in his well-known Essay, advocates strict regimen for preventing and curing diseases: by milk and vegetable diet he reduced himself from thirty-two stone weight almost a third, recovered his strength, activity, and cheerfulness, and attained the good age of 72. Jeremy Bentham, the eminent philosophical jurist and writer on legislation, died in 1832, in Queen-square-place, Westminster, where he had resided nearly half a century, in his 85th year. Up to extreme old age he retained much of the intellectual power of the prime of manhood, the simplicity and freshness of early youth; and even in the last moments of his existence the serenity and cheerfulness of his mind did not desert him. “He was capable,” says Dr. Southwood Smith, to whom he bequeathed his body for purposes of anatomical science, in the lecture delivered over his remains, “of great severity and continuity of mental labour. For upwards of half a century he devoted seldom less than eight, often ten, and occasionally twelve hours of every day to intense study. This was the more remarkable as his physical constitution was by no means strong. His health during the periods of childhood, youth, and adolescence was infirm; it was not until the age of manhood that it acquired some degree of vigour; but that vigour increased with advancing age, so that during the space of sixty years he never laboured under any serious malady, and rarely suffered even from slight indisposition; and at the age of 84 he looked no older, and constitutionally was not older, than most men are at 60; thus adding another illustrious name to the splendid catalogue which establishes the fact, that “He was a great economist of time. He knew the value of minutes. The disposal of his hours, both of labour and of repose, was a matter of systematic arrangement; and the arrangement was determined on the principle that it is a calamity to lose the smallest portion of time. He did not deem it sufficient to provide against the loss of a day or an hour; he took effectual means to prevent the occurrence of any such calamity to him. But he did more: he was careful to provide against the loss of even a single minute; and there is on record no example of a human being who lived more habitually under the practical consciousness that his days are numbered, and that ‘the night cometh in which no man can work.’” It should, however, be added, that Mr. Bentham’s lot in life was a happy one. Even though he did not enjoy a widely diffused reputation in his own country, and his peculiar views exposed him to the attacks of contemporary writers, his easy circumstances and excellent health enabled him to devote his whole time and energies to those pursuits which exercised his highest faculties, and were to him a rich and unfailing source of the most delightful excitement. His retired habits likewise preserved him from personal contact with any but those who valued his acquaintance; and as for the writers who spoke of him with ridicule and contempt, he never read them, and therefore they never disturbed the serenity of his mind, or ruffled the tranquil surface of his contemplative and happy life. It would be well for public writers if they possessed more of such equanimity as Mr. Bentham’s, to shield them from the venom of adverse criticism and the attacks of those dishonest critics who abuse every indication of success which they conceive to stand in the way of their own advancement. We have something of the old leaven of Grub-street in our times, though the name is blotted out from our metropolitan streetology. It is true that the patronage of great men is no longer valued by men of letters,—it is but as dust in the balance against the weight of public opinion,—but something of the old trade of factious Mr. Thackeray, to our thinking one of the most masculine and unaffected writers of his day, has well described the Grub-street association of “author and rags—author and dirt—author and gin,” such as were the literary hacks of the reign of George II.; but literature now takes its rank with other learned professions. 58. Fontenelle attributed his longevity to a good course of strawberry eating every season: his only ailment was fever in the spring; when he used to say, “If I can only hold out till strawberries come in, I shall get well.” His long life may, however, rather be attributed to his insensibility, of which he himself boasted: he was rarely known to laugh or cry. 59. Bishop Hough; Comforts of Old Age. 60. Ibid. 61. Selections Gent. Mag. vol. iv. p. 299. 62. See Choice Notes (History), pp. 170-177; and Military Centenarians, Notes and Queries, 2d series, No. 232, pp. 238, 239, for several well-authenticated records. 63. Morning Advertiser. 64. Notes and Queries, 2d series, No. 250. Great AgesTo return to Longevity. The following additional instances are mostly of our own time: Among Lawyers, Francis Maseres, fifty years Cursitor-Baron of the Court of Exchequer, died 1824, at the age of 93: he was a ripe classical scholar, and one of the ablest mathematicians of his day. The Eldon family present three noteworthy examples: Mr. Scott, the Newcastle merchant, father of Lord Stowell and the Earl of Eldon, died 1800, at the age of 92: the two eminent sons, Stowell, 1836, at 91, and Eldon, 1838, at 87. Lord Plunket, the statesman and lawyer, who died 1854, had reached 90. Lord Chancellor Campbell, who in his busy law-life wrote many volumes of biography, attained the age of 81. Sir William Blizard, the Surgeon, who died in 1835, in his 94th year, rose to eminence under many disadvantages. With all his activity and industry, except a fever caught by working night and day in the dissecting-room, his health never failed him till the last; he was temperate; and the only wine he drank was Cape. Sir William Burnett, the physician and scientific inventor, reached 82. In 1862 two eminent Mathematicians died within a month of each other: Jean Baptiste Biot, aged 88; and Peter Barlow, 86. Prof. Narrien, of Sandhurst, died 1860, at 77; and, same year and age, Finlaison, the actuary. Francis Place, the Westminster Politician, who died 1854, had reached 82. The Duc de Pasquier, the celebrated French statesman, attained the great age of 96: he died 1862, and was the oldest statesman of our time. Talleyrand, next to Napoleon the most extraordinary man of the revolutionary period of France, died 1838, aged 84. The oldest Poets of our time were W. L. Bowles, 1850, aged 88; same year, Wordsworth, poet-laureate, 80; James Montgomery, 1854, at 82; Samuel Rogers, 1855, aged 96; Arndt, the German poet, 1860, at 91; and Dr. Croly, the poet and divine, 86. Mitscherlich, the German Philologist, died 1854, at 94; same year, Gresnall, biographer, 89, and Faber, theologian, 80. Hamner-Purgstall, the Oriental historian, who died 1856, had attained 87; 1857, Hincks, the Orientalist, 90. Sir John Stoddart, the Newspaper editor, who died 1855, had reached 85,—a rare age for a public journalist. John Sharpe, the tasteful littÉrateur, who died 1860, reached 83. Dr. Lingard, the Historian, died 1851, aged 82. In 1859, Hallam, the historian; same year, Elphinstone, the historian of India, aged 81. John Britton, the Topographer and antiquary, who died 1857, had reached 86: he was cheerful and chirping almost to the end. His brother topographer, Brayley, died 1854, aged 85. John Adey Repton, Kirby, the Entomologist, who died 1860, had reached 91. Professor Jameson, the naturalist, died 1854, aged 81. Brunel, the engineer of the Thames Tunnel, died 1849, aged 81. Captain Manby, who invented apparatus for saving shipwrecked persons, and who died 1854, had reached 89. Sir John Ross, the Arctic navigator, died 1856, at 79. The chemists, Andrew Ure, at 79, and Thenard, at 80, died 1857. Baron Humboldt, who died 1859, reached 92; same year, Sir G. Staunton, the Chinese scholar, at 79. Colonel Leake, the geographer, 1860, at 83; and in the same year Carl Ritter, the geographer, 81; and Bishop Rigaud, astronomer, 85. In 1858 died an unusually large number of Men of Science and Letters, and Artists, at great ages. Count Radetzsky, at 92; Creuzer, the German antiquary, 87; Thomas Tooke, political economist, 85; three musical composers, Neukomm, 80; J. B. Cramer, 88; and Horsley, 84;—Esenbach, botanist, 82; AimÉ de Bonpland, 85; Robert Brown, botanist, 84; Bunting, Wesleyan preacher, 80; Mrs. Marcet, educational writer, 89; Edward Pease, “the Father of Railways,” 92; Robert Owen, socialist, 87; Richard Taylor, of the Philosophical Magazine, 77. In 1860 we lost the following eminent Engineers: Vicat (France), aged 75; General Pasley, 80; Eaton Hodgkinson, 72; Sir Howard Douglas, 86. In 1862 there died General Tulloch, at 72; and James Walker, at 81; and in 1860, Jesse Hartley, 80. Charles Macklin, the oldest English Actor and playwright, who died 1797, had reached the age of 107: for his last twenty years he never took off his clothes, except to change them, or to be rubbed over with warm brandy or gin; he ate, drank, and slept without regard to set times, but according to his inclination. M. Delphat, the French Musician, who died 1855, had reached 99; and in the same year died Robert Linley, the violoncellist, at 83. John Braham lived far beyond the usual age of singers, namely, to his 82d year: he died February 17, 1856; he first sung in public when ten years old. Ludwig Spohr, the German composer, died 1859, at 80. Some aged persons have literally fallen asleep in death. Sir Christopher Wren passed his latter years at Hampton Court, and his townhouse in St. James’s-street. He caught cold, and this hastened his death. He was in town; he was accustomed to sleep a short time after dinner; and on February 25, 1723, his servant, thinking his master had slept longer than usual, went into his room, and found Wren dead in his chair; he was in his 91st year. James Elmes, who wrote Wren’s life, died 1862, aged 80. Copley, the Painter, died 1815, aged 78; his son, Lord Lyndhurst, in 1863, attained his 91st year: his mother lived to see her son a second time Lord High Chancellor. Stothard, for several months before his decease, though his bodily infirmities prevented his attending to his labours as an artist, would not relinquish his attendance at the meetings and lectures of the Royal Academy and in the library, notwithstanding extreme deafness prevented his hearing what was passing. Mr. Constable, in a letter to a friend, written in 1838, says: “I passed an hour or two with Mr. Stothard on Sunday evening. Poor man! the only elysium he has in this world he finds in his own enchanting works. His daughter does all in her power to make him happy and comfortable.” Leslie remarks that Stothard must have possessed great constitutional serenity of mind; he was also, no doubt, much supported by Sir M. A. Shee, Painter, P.R.A., died 1850, at the age of 80. J. M. W. Turner, the greatest landscape painter, R.A., 1851, at 77; and 1854, Geo. Clint, painter of humour, 82; Wachter, the famous historical painter, who died 1852, reached 90. Two aged Frenchmen died 1853: Fontaine, the architect, 90; and Renouard, bibliographer, 98. James Ward, the animal painter, who died 1859, reached 91; Alfred Chalon, 1860, at 80; and in 1859, David Cox, founder of our Water-Colour School, 76. In 1850 died Schadow, the Hungarian Sculptor, 86. In 1856, Sir R. Westmacott, the sculptor, R.A.; and next year, Christian Rauch, the German sculptor, at 80. Matthew Cotes Wyatt, the Sculptor of the colossal Wellington statue, died 1862, at 86. The oldest engraver of the above period was John Landseer, who died 1852, aged 90. Sir John Soane, R.A., the Architect, died 1837, having reached the age of 84, bequeathing his museum, in Lincoln’s-inn Fields, to the nation. Sir John was the son of a Berkshire bricklayer, and by his own energy rose to eminence as an architect: he designed a greater number of public edifices than any contemporary. His last work (1833), the State-Paper Office, in St. James’s-park, was very unlike any other of his designs; it was taken down in 1862. Foster, the Artist, of Derby, celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his birthday on November 8, 1862, when he was entertained by his friends in the county hall. Mr. Foster served under Abercrombie in Egypt, and left the army on the day on which Nelson died. He has been five times married; and his youngest child, born sixty-eight years after his eldest, is now (1862) only ten years of age. The great ages in the following records must be considered very remarkable: Mr. Henry H. Breen, writing from St. Lucia, states that Louis Mutal, a Negro, died in the island in 1851, at the age of 135 years. Mutal was a native of Macouba, in the island of Martinique, and about 1785 settled in St. Lucia as a dealer in trade; after his death was found among his papers his marriage contract with his slave, Marie Catherine, in 1771, which establishes the fact of his being then 55 years of age, and consequently of his having been born in 1716. This is followed by a certificate, showing that the marriage contract was published and recorded in 1772. The date of his death in the parish register has been carefully verified by Mr. Breen, who adds: “There are now living in this island several persons of the age of 90, or upwards,” in a population of about 26,000 souls. The particulars are:
65. Communicated to Notes and Queries, August 4, 1855. 66. Notes and Queries, September 8, 1855. THE HAPPY OLD MAN.The wisest and best productions of the human intellect, says Dr. Moore, How instructive is the usual state of memory and hope in advanced life! As the senses become dull, the nervous system slow, and the whole body unfit for active uses, the old man necessarily falls into constant abstraction. Like all debilitated persons, he feels his unfitness for action, and, of course, becomes querulous if improperly excited. Peacefulness, gentle exercise among flowers and trees, unstimulating diet, and the quiet company of books and philosophic toys, are suitable for him. With such helps his heart will beat kindly, and his intellect, however childlike, will maintain a beautiful power to the last. Objects of affection occasionally move him with more than their accustomed force. Young children are especially agreeable to him. When approaching him with the gentle love and reverence which unspoiled childhood is so apt to exhibit, his heart seems suddenly to kindle as the little fingers wander over his shrivelled hand and wrinkled brow. He smiles, and at once goes back in spirit to his childhood, and finds a world of fun, frolic, and liveliness before him; 67. The Use of the Body to the Mind. PREPARATORY TO DEATH.Jeremy Taylor, in his Holy Dying (General Considerations Preparatory to Death), has this memorable passage, in which he illustrates the daily experiences of every thoughtful mind: And because this consideration is of great usefulness and of great necessity to many purposes of wisdom and the spirit, all the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a grave where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies till they rise again in a fair or in an intolerable eternity. Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death; and death possesses both those portions Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it: and God by all the variety of his Providence makes us see death every where, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person. Nature hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two: and the spring and the autumn sends throngs of men and women to charnel-houses; and all the summer long men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then the Syrian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the year’s provision, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity; and he that escapes till the winter only stays for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter’s cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death; and you can go no whither but you tread upon a dead man’s bones. DEATH BEFORE ADAM.Two hundred years ago, long before the science of Geology called for the belief that mortality had been stamped “For ‘flesh and blood,’ that is, whatsoever is born of Adam, ‘cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’ And they are injurious to Christ who think that from Adam we might have inherited immortality. Christ was the giver and preacher of it; ‘he brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.’” Again: “For that Adam was made mortal in his nature is infinitely certain, and proved by his very eating and drinking, his sleep and recreation, &c.” And in another passage, quoted by Professor Hitchcock: “That death which God threatened to Adam, and which passed upon his posterity, is not the going out of this world, but the manner of going. If he had stayed in innocence, he should have gone placidly and fairly, without vexatious and affective circumstances; he should not have died by sickness, defect, misfortune, or unwillingness.” These sentiments Archdeacon Pratt 68. Science and Scripture not at Variance, 2d ed. 1858. FUTURE EARTHLY EXISTENCE OF THE HUMAN RACE.Regarding Man, independently of any revealed knowledge of his future destiny, but simply with reference to his relations with the physical world about him, Mr. Hopkins, the able geologist, asks: “Do we see in his character and position here any indication that this earth is his destined abiding place for indefinite periods of time? We conceive that a negative answer to the question is suggested at least by the fact that the extent of the earth’s surface and its powers of production are finite, whereas the tendency in human population to increase is unlimited. It is undoubtedly 69. Geology, by William Hopkins, M.A., F.R.S.; Cambridge Essays, 1857. |
|
