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old age when he was still too young. His praises read sweetly, and contain much truth; but it is the composition we admire as much as the sentiment it embodies. We reflect that Cicero, in talking of old age, was still far from the period when he might speak of it from experience. He was only composing a theme which he had set himself as a task.

But at seventy years of age, Buffon, who regarded himself as still young, wrote-not of set purpose, but incidentally, and among his other writings-concerning old age. We listen as to the true and genuine homage of one who stands on the confines of both periods, and feels himself entitled to speak freely of each-when, in contrasting his own state with that of younger men around him, he says, "Every day that I rise in good health, have I not the enjoyment of this day as immediately and as fully as you have? If I conform my movements, my appetites, my desires, to the impulses of a wise nature alone, am I not as wise and more happy than you? And the view of the past, which awakens the regrets of old fools, offers to me, on the contrary, the enjoyments of memory, agreeable pictures, precious images, which are worth more than your objects of pleasure; for they are pleasant, these images, they are pure, they call up only amiable recollections. The inquietudes, the chagrins, all the troop of sadnesses which accompany your youthful enjoyments, disappear in the picture which represents them to me. Regrets ought to disappear in like manner; they are only the last flashes of that foolish vanity which never grows old.

"Let us not forget another advantage, or at least a powerful compensation, which contributes to the happiness of old age. This is, that the moral gains more than the physical loses. In fact, the moral gains everything; and if something is lost by the physical, the compensation is complete. Some one asked the philosopher Fontenelle, when ninety-five years of age, which twenty years of his life he regretted the most? I regret little,' he replied; and yet the happiest years of my life were those between the fifty-fifth and the seventy-fifth.' He made this confession in good faith,

and his experience arose out of these sensible and consoling truths. At fifty-five years a man's fortune is established, his reputation made, con-sideration is obtained, the state of life fixed, pretensions given up or satisfied, projects overthrown or established, the passions for the most part calmed or cooled, the career nearly completed, as regards the labours which every mans owes to society; there are fewer enemies, or rather fewer envious persons who are capable of injuring us, because the counterpoise of merit is acknowledged by the public voice."

"In

"The spirit increases in perfection," says Cornaro," as the body grows older." It becomes fitted for new duties and exercises of mind; for the development of the human faculties is not simultaneous, it is successive. Those which rule at one period, become subordinate at another. youth" says Flourens, "the attention is quick, lively, always on the alert, fixes itself on everything, but reflection is wanting. In manhood, attention and reflection are united, and this constitutes the strength of manhood. In old age attention lessens, but reflection increases; it is the period in which the human heart bends back on itself, and knows itself best."

"The old man," says M. Reveillé Parise, "smiles sometimes, he very rarely laughs. Goodness, that grace of old age, is often found under a grave and severe exterior, for the first comes from the heart, and the second from the physical being which has become weak. Patience is the privilege of old age. A great advantage of a man who has lived long is, that he knows how to wait. In the old man, everything is submitted to reflection."

Thus old age has its pleasures, it appears, and its compensations. It is by no means the unenjoyable period we are apt to fancy it. For its calm and reasonable pleasures, wise men praise it above the other periods of life.

It is surely worth living for, therefore. It is even worth sacrificing the pleasures of youthful excess, if by so doing we can hope to reach and live through it. But if it begin only at seventy-the natural termination of manhood, according to M. Flourenshow few ever do reach it! and of these,

again, how few have left themselves in a condition to taste its peculiar enjoyments and compensations!

THIRD. But if old age be an enjoyable period of life-if it be really worth living to, and living for, it is worth caring for when reached. It is to be reached, as we have seen, by living a sober life; it is to be reached in good health by a reasonable obedience to the rules of Lessius. But when this green and worthy old age is attained, how is it to be nursed and specially upheld?

With a view to this special end M. Reveillé Parise has laid down four simple rules.

The FIRST is to know how to be old. There is very much in this rule. "Few people know how to be old," was one of the sayings of Rochefoucauld; and the philosophy of this knowledge is expressed by Voltaire in the couplet:

"Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son age

De son âge a tous les malheurs." The SECOND rule is to know oneself well. Both of these precepts are more philosophical than medical, and yet both lie at the basis of a successful medical management, at the period when age and ill health are so likely to conjoin.

The THIRD rule is to make a suitable adjustment of the daily life. Good physical habits produce health, as good moral habits produce happiness. Old men who do every day the same thing, with the same moderation and the same relish, live for ever!" One can scarcely believe," says Reveillé Parise, "how far a little health well treated will carry us." And "the rule of the sage," says Cicero," is to make use of what one has, and to act in everything according to one's strength."

And the FOURTH rule is, to attack every malady at its beginning. In youth there is a reserve of force--a dormant life, as it were, behind the visible acting life. The first life being in danger, this second life comes to its nid-and thus youth rallies after much neglect or ill usage, and still lives on. But old age has no such reserve life. Every ailment of age, therefore, must be taken up quick and cut short, if the single, unsupported, easily enfeebled life is to be surely upheld.

By following these fundamental rules, and the practical precepts as to diet, exercise, temperature, &c., which M. Reveillé Parise deduces from them, can we prolong life? No; we cannot by any art prolong life, in the sense of making it pass the limit prescribed by the constitution of man. But we shall be able to live an entire and complete life extending our days as far as the laws of our individual constitution, combined with the more general laws which regulate the constitution of the species, will admit of.

The subject, as we have sketched it, seems indeed, really is-complete in itself. And yet speculative questions rise up in connection with it, some of which awaken doubts as to the main conclusion at which we have arrived. Grant that human life may naturally extend to a hundred years, or even to a century and a half, then we naturally say to ourselves,-Were men really to live so long as this, and other animals in proportion, how thickly peopled the world would become ! If births greatly exceed deaths now among civilised nations, living at a state of peace, how would it be were men to live usually to a hundred years, with health and vigour in proportion! This reflection did not escape the great Buffon- great in genius and in capacity for speculation, but limited, like the time in which he lived, and often erroneous, in his knowledge of facts. He met the objection it embodies with a new and brilliant hypothesis.

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"The total quantity of life on the globe," he says, "is always the same. Death, which seems to destroy all, destroys nothing of that primitive life which is common to all the species of organised beings. God, in creating the first individuals of each species of animal and vegetable, not only gave form to the dust of the earth, but rendered it living and animated by including in each individual a

greater or smaller number of active principles, of living organic molecules, indestructible in their nature, and common to all organised beings. These molecules pass from body to body, and serve to maintain and continue the life, or to nourish and enlarge

the body of every individual alike; and after the dissolution of the body, after its destruction, even its reduction to ashes, these organic molecules, upon which death has no power, still survive, pass into other beings, and bring to them nourishment and life. Every production, every renewal, every increase by generation, by nutrition, by development, supposes then a preceding destruction, a conversion of substance, a transport of these organic molecules which never multiply, but which, always existing in equal number, keep nature always equally alive, the earth equally peopled, and always equally resplendent with the first glory of Him who created it."

Who, after reading this passage, will deny to Buffon the praise both of genius and eloquence? No wonder he has charmed and captivated so many generations of admiring readers, and persuaded them to receive his poetical imaginings as the dogmas of true science.

The entire doctrine of Buffon, that the quantity of life on the globe is fixed, is a pure speculation. His organic molecules are a second still more ethereal imagination, devised to explain the possibility of the first. Except as a curious hypothetical notion, wherewithal to while away an idle hour, we would dismiss the first not only from our books, but from our thoughts. It can scarcely in any way be connected with the positive knowledge of our time. The second speculation is only to be numbered with the vain fancies, antiquated though fine, which abound so much in the purely poetical physical philosophy of past centuries.

And yet there is a charm in this poetical philosophy which makes us regret while we dismiss it. We cannot help admiring the speculators of the olden time, as men of finely-gifted minds. And we envy them those happy hours of creative inspiration, when, by their midnight lamps, or beneath the shade of academic groves, they built up poetical worlds, and by imaginative methods constructed and regulated all their wheels.

It is no doubt owing to feelings of this kind that the great views of Buffon, the substance of his elo

quence, possess still the power to charm and influence M. Flourens. "I reject," he says, "the organic molecules of Buffon, as I do the monads of Leibnitz. They are only philosophic expedients for removing difficulties which they do not remove. I study life in neither of these, but in living beings themselves; and from this study I learn two thingsfirst, that the number of species has been continually diminishing ever since animals have existed upon the globe; and, second, that the number of individuals in certain species has been, on the contrary, continually increasing. The result of these contrary actions is, that, taking everything into account, the total quantity of life-by which I understand the total number of living beings-remains in effect, as Buffon has said, very nearly the same."

Tamed down into plain English, the eloquent imaginings of Buffon, as interpreted and understood by M. Flourens, amount simply to this, that the number of individual living beings existing at one time on the face of the earth has always been very nearly the same. Out of a purely speculative assertion like this what good can be extracted? Does it really throw any light upon paleontological history, or derive any confirmation from such chapters of this history as have yet been written? Does it enable us, in any degree, to understand better the Divine plan and procedure in the past, as it is recorded in the rocky strata-or in the present, as seen in the supposed progressive increase of the human race?

Nevertheless M. Flourens, in the book before us, sets formally to work to prove his two propositions.

"That species are always lessening in number," he says, "is evident from the fact that several species are known to have become extinct in comparatively recent times. The dodo has become extinct since the Portuguese first visited the Isle of France in 1545. The primitive types of nearly all our domestic animals-the ox, the horse, the camel, the dog-are all extinct. Immediately before the historic period the mammoth and the mastodon disappeared, leaving the elephant as the sole existing gigantic quadruped. Before these, again, the

megatherium, the dinotherium, and how many others!

"To take a special example. Not less than forty species of pachyderms are known to have lived on the soil of France, and of these the only one that now remains is the wild boar; and of nearly a hundred species of ruminating animals, only the ox, the stag, and the roebuck. Finally, M. Agassiz reckons not less than twentyfive thousand species of fossil fishes all lost, while we know only five or six thousand living fishes-and of extinct shells forty thousand are reckoned in a fossil state."

These facts are admitted, but the conclusion which M. Flourens hastily draws from them is not admissible.

Since life first appeared upon the earth, he says, species have always gone on diminishing. But of this assertion the facts he has advanced are no proof whatever. It is an undisputed fact in paleontology, that species, and even genera, have from time to time disappeared from the surface of the globe. But it is equally undisputed that new species and genera have from time to time made their appearance-man himself, so far as we know, being among the last. New forms constantly succeeded the old.

And who shall say that at any one of those epochs in which life most abounded, the number of species or genera was really less than in another? Who can even, with a show of reason, say-taking all species of living things together-that there are fewer genera or species on the earth at this moment-in air, land, and water-than at any former geologic era he could name? All that can be safely said is, that man, as the dominant species, is gradually subduing and extirpating some hundreds of other species in the present era, and that the individuals of his own species, and of a few useful domestic animals, are at the same time increasing somewhat in number.

But in this latter increase is there anything more than an imaginary compensation for the other forms of life that are lessened or extirpated? Is there in it any evidence of a system of compensation having been in existence in more ancient geological epochs? There is nothing of the sort. The imaginary law of Buffon is rendered in no degree more probable by the conjectural modifications of M. Flourens. All we can admit at present is, that the quantity of life upon the globe at any one time, and the forms in which this life manifests itself, are dependent upon the will of the Deity. To what general laws He has subjected this total quantity and these forms, we cannot even guess.

Do these speculations as to the quantity of life upon the globe interfere in any way with our reasonings and conclusions as to the natural and possible length of human life? Not in the least. As an abstract result of physiological inquiry, it has been rendered probable that from ninety to a hundred years is the natural length of an ordinary human life. As a special and individual positive result, affecting each of us to whom this information is given, it has been rendered further probable that, by leading a moderate and sober life, any of us may attain this length of life in comparative health and comfort. As to what would happen on the face of the globe, were all men so to live that none should fail to reach this great age-as to how the people would multiply, and what would become of them, these are questions which do not concern us as individuals anxious to live long-which, were we all to begin incontinently so to live, could scarcely cause anxiety for generations to come, and which we may confidently leave to be answered by the ALL-DISPOSER.

ZAIDEE: A ROMANCE.

PART VI.-BOOK II.

CHAPTER VIII.-SCHOOL.

Ir is a day of great exhaustion and languor in Bedford Place. Every one who comes up-stairs, comes with dragging footsteps, slow and toilsome; every one who enters the drawingroom sinks despondingly on sofa or easy-chair, and exclaims of being "so tired!" The flatness of excitement overpast is upon the whole house. The maids yawn at their work, and Buttons himself looks half asleep. The drawing-room is carelessly arranged, the little parlour in a litter, and Mrs Disbrowe's own apartment strewed with ends of ribbon and scraps of thread; but Mrs Disbrowe, too tired to find fault, passes over these shortcomings with unwonted forbearance. Breakfast is late, and there is no freshness in the morning; but every one is submissive, and bears with charred toast and cold tea with a singular magnanimity. Even mamma has forgotten her pink ribbons this morning, and Minnie is not sent off in disgrace for her ravelled locks and broken-down slippers. It is the first day after the marriage day; the first morning on which the family have awoke to find Charlotte gone.

Papa, who does not say anything, instinctively feels the air chilly this morning, and lounges over the fire in his dressing-gown when he should have been at his office. Leo is pale, and somehow reminds one strongly of those baskets of empty wine-bottles which stand below in the hall. Mrs Disbrowe, presiding at the table, forgets who takes tea and who coffee, and, with a motherly sigh, misses Charlotte, who was her deputy here. It was a very merry wedding, marked by few sentimentalities; and father and mother are glad to have their child so well married, and proud of the display of friends, the sparkling table, and the gay procession. There was nothing to lament about in the whole business; and Mrs Disbrowe pretended

to no particular refinement of tenderness. Notwithstanding, this first morning, everybody perceived the first break in the family; everybody was a little uncomfortable, and felt a want and vacancy. She was their Charlotte, this careless young lady, and they missed her when she was gone.

So mamma, for all her activity, will rather waste this morning, sitting on a sofa musing, living yesterday over again, and taking little note of to-day. Minnie, unreproved for once, will sit at the window with a novel in her lap. There will be so much to talk about down stairs, that the household work will fare badly, and Mrs Disbrowe's dinner turn out much less perfect than usual. In such a well-governed house, this momentary lull does no harm. One day to the memory of Miss Charlotte Disbrowe is an abundant sacrifice. Mamma will talk of her daughter, Mrs Lancaster, and be herself after to-morrow.

But the languor of the rest of the house has not reached to the nursery. Everything is elaborately correct and proper to-day in this high-seated domain. If Nurse longs in the depths of her heart to share the gossip in the kitchen, Nurse is prudent, and keeps her desire under cover. Rosie and Lettie, seated together as usual, are unfolding their work at a window. Jack, in profound contemplation, studies the basin of pure water in which he has launched his boat. Harry is busily occupied making a paper boat, to rival that famous production of wood. Sissy and Tommy play at cat's cradle. They are all pursuing their amusements elaborately, and not with the freedom of common use. Some hidden movement of rebellion is in the nursery to-day.

For upon the table are a number of books well thumbed, and worn with use-primers, spelling-books, readingbooks, little grammars and geogra

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