are we wrong in supposing that there are evils peculiar to old age, The lean and slipper'd pantaloon, The hose, a world too wide for his shrunk shank ?' "But I will not go on, except indeed that I recollect a denunciation of old age by Rousseau, which cannot offend you, at least, who are greatly too far off it to be affected by it." "O! even if I were not," said he, "by all means let us have it." I hesitated a little; but, urged by him, at length repeated, Far from taking this ill, it moved his laughter. "And pray,” said he, " thou representative of most immaculate and unimpeachable youth, do not the world despise and avoid empty young coxcombs, who bore you with their self-sufficient and boisterous spirits, as well as languishing old men ? Are you never in bad humour? Have you no infirmities? no coughs, gravel, or even gout? I reject this monopoly of disease and ill-humour by age; though I grant you the other terrors are too faithfully described; not only the shrunk shank,' but the big manly voice, turning again towards childish treble pipes; and even the 'second childishness,' Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.' "Yet these last, by making us wish for death, would reconcile us to it; and even these last do not proscribe mind. These, however, are extreme cases, for seldom indeed do all these privations befal one individual, and leave him without any resources. Perhaps the resources left have even heightened enjoyments to make up for what is lost. Take my own example. God has taken away something, but has left me more. I am deaf, but I might have been blind. I cannot hear the blackbird, but I can enjoy this ample prospect, as much, or more than ever. I cannot walk twenty miles a-day, as you do; but I can sit on a bench, and, better than you (because I feel it more), feel and adore the sun. "My gratitude for this is not only greater, as it ought to be, when I consider what I might be, but is of a more exquisite and warmer nature, and therefore makes me happier than the feelings upon it of a youth, who, seeing how common it is, looks upon it as a right. Be assured the frame of mind which old age thus generates, alone balances, nay, more than balances, all the gay carelessness of youth. "Let me return then to that with which I set out, and which alone I hold as a set-off against youth; I mean a healthy old age, unburthened by conscience, having honourable retrospections, and alive to mental cheerfulness. With thesc, an old man need envy no young one. "One evil there is, I grant you, and that a severe one. The loss of friends, together with the prospect of being soon lost one's self. But besides that no young age can be insured against this, even here is consolation in hope-the hope of living again, and in a better world joining the loved beings who have gone before us. I thank God that, far from having parted with this hope, it has increased with my years, and in the indulgence of it I wait with calmness the approach of the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time.”” I could not, and indeed wished not, to reply to this, for I felt both its force and its pathos. A pause ensued, which, from its solemnity, neither of us seemed inclined to interrupt, till, warming with his last sentiment, he asked me if I had ever seen some beautiful lines of Hughes, which he said should be written in letters of gold: "There let Time's creeping winter shed A scene of deep eternity, Till, life dissolving at the view, END OF VOL. II. |