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Lay like the idol of some bygone race,

Its name and rites forgotten *.”

The first observations, then, are not exhilarating, since it is necessary to cast a glance at what is essentially defective and symptomatic of decay. Truly youth is beautiful even in trees; whereas these poor, bent, decrepit, gnarled, distorted, weatherbeaten old elms, with only one vast arm perhaps hideously overbalancing, and giving in consequence to the whole an unsymme trical form, are but a sorry sight; and if we could look within the bark it is still worse: there the ruin is even greater. Alas! it is too often so with the human plant. It is not, unfortunately, the exterior of men, as of trees, that loses beauty by the lapse of years; with both there is often a decay that is not seen, which is far worse. The individual maximum in the growth of trees is prolonged to the time when the heart of the tree begins to alter. It is the same sometimes with the virtue of men.

"L'âme en vivant s'altère ;

A force de marcher l'homme erre, l'esprit doute,
Tous laissent quelque chose aux buissons de la route,
Les troupeaux leur toisson, et l'homme sa vertu !"

The saint agrees with the poet. "Let us be assured, dearest brethren," said Faustus, abbot of Lerins, " that unless we take care, unless we daily prune and keep down our passions, the longer we live in this world, the worse we shall become +." The remark is as old as any moral observation made by men, and the well-known passage of Aristotle is sufficient to prove its justice ‡. It was a Greek proverb,

Νεκρὸν ἰατρεύειν καὶ γέροντα νουθετεῖν ταὐτόν ἐστι.

Juvenal says of a bad habit,

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"How many are there of these evil companions! Irascible with age," says Sophocles," angered by the least thing.

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They come to deserve a by-name, such as was given to Niccolo, the Florentine sculptor, who was called Tribolo,' a thistle, a tormentor." Age I should reverence," says Melantius, “if it were temperate; but testy years are most contemptible." "I know," says another ancient poet, "the character of these old men, who only know how to condemn."

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τῶν τ' αὖ γερόντων οἶδα τὰς ψυχάς, ὅτι

οὐδὲν βλέπουσιν ἄλλο, πλὴν ψήφῳ δακεῖν*.

"One might suppose," he says, "that the Delphian god had predicted to them as to Philocleon, that they should die whenever they suffered an accused person to escape from their hands+." No wonder, then, that such observers, after eulogizing youth, should add, with Euripides, "but sad and cruel old age I hate.” "Their blood is cold," says the poet of the Augustan era; "they are insensible to praise and glory."

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Non laudis amor, nec gloria cessit

Pulsa metu; sed enim gelidus tardante senecta

Sanguis hebet, frigentque effetæ in corpore vires §."

There is no cessation of these accusations in modern times among those who watch the old.

Only hear them :
"Austere, atrocious! the old human friends
With one foot in the grave, with dim eyes, strange
To tears save drops of dotage, with long white
And scanty hairs, and shaking hands, and heads
As palsied as their hearts are hard, they counsel,
Cabal, and put men's lives out, as if life

Were no more than the feelings long extinguish'd
In their relentless bosoms."

Then, elsewhere addressing them, the same observer says,
"It doth avail not that I weep for ye,-

Ye cannot change, since ye are old and grey,

And ye have chosen your own lot.-Your fame must be
A book of blood, whence in a milder day

Men shall learn truth, when ye are wrapt in clay."

This is extreme blame, you say; but how many unimpassioned witnesses still attest "the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them!" saying,

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Have their ingratitude in them hereditary:
Their blood is cak'd, 'tis cold, it seldom flows;

'Tis lack of kindly warmth, they are not kind."

An old man," says Pope Innocent III., " is easily provoked, with difficulty appeased; he is tenacious and cupidinous, sad and querulous, swift to speak and slow to hear ||." How many have their tales of some domestic misery arising from the vices of the old playing the tyrant on a little scale! how many can tell us of the dwelling wherein some miserly wretch,

* Achar. 375. § v. 394.

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D. Inn. Pap. III., De Contemptu Mundi, c. ix.

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"A cancred, crabbed carle does dwell
That has no skill of court nor courtesie,

Ne cares of what men say of him, ill or well!"

"As men "all pas

There is still to be found the man like Camillus at Ardea, quum diis hominibusque accusandis senesceret *." advance in life," says the author of Henrietta Temple, sions resolve themselves into money. Love, ambition, even poetry, end in this." Oh, what a deformed gipsy is this Mammon, whom such old men have for their mistress! Would you see their favourite dwelling? It is "one of those gloomy-looking places in which this execrable hag loves to enshrine herself. The exterior has not been painted for years, and the massive iron shutters are coated with rust. It looks like a money-getting place it is so dark and cheerless. If, during the morning, a vagrant sunbeam by chance penetrates through the closely grated, dusty windows, it quickly withdraws again, like some unwelcome guest, chilled by the coldness of the reception it has met with."

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Then, again, the vanity of old age is complained of. "Adhuc enim," says Seneca, "non pueritia in nobis, sed quod gravius puerilitas remanet. Et hoc quidem pejus est, auctoritatem habemus senum, vitia puerorum, nec puerorum tantum, sed infantium +." Antonio de Guevara contrives to be facetious even on this melancholy subject, writing to one who, like the wolf, is grey before he is good; for, addressing Don Alphonso Espinel, lieutenant-general of Oviedo, he rallies him on his vices in the following manner : Magnificent lord and honourable old man, since you are past seventy and I am not far from sixty, it seems to me that it will not be bad advice or any extravagant solicitude, if we should both of us begin to put in practice our late good resolutions. This year, when you were laid up with the gout, when I went to see you, you asked me to note down some of the privileges that ought to belong to old men, which question of a truth you should have addressed to some one wiser and older than myself. However, on condition that you will not be angry or in the least annoyed, I will comply with your request, protesting, however, a thousand times that my intention is not to give licence to my pen to malign the grave and honourable, by whose prudence republics are governed, and from whom youth learns wisdom, for that would be sacrilege; but I mean only to describe men like myself, who am but a vagabond. Some have written in praise of old age. Well, God give them more rest than they have had sense, for we see that it is in truth an evil disease. I will note down here, then, some of their privileges, but to mark all would be impossible. + Epist. iv.

* Lib. v. 43.

It is a privilege, then, of old men to have their finger often in their ear, and to fancy, whenever persons speak together words which they hear not, that it is to the prejudice of their honour or of their goods. It is their privilege to have clouds in their eye when there are none in the sky, and not to recognize their friend. It is their privilege also to talk of their former passions. It is their privilege to ask, the first thing in the morning, what weather it is, and whether there is a change of moon; for by dint of infirmities they become astrologers. It is their privilege also to ask every minute which way the vane turns. It is their privilege to seek company, either in the market or in some shop, to know what passes in the fields or in the town, and to ask what news at court, though the worst is, they never can remember a word of it. It is their privilege to be always full of suspicion and anger against their servants, saying that they do nothing right, and to carry a stick to stir the fire and to threaten their varlets withal. Item, it is one of their privileges, at least once a month, to shut themselves up in their room or closet and count their silver, putting on one side the double ducats, on the other the ecus, on the other the crowns, and never to change a single piece. It is also their privilege to have a good feather bed, to wear fur and gloves, and to have their bed warmed, though the misfortune is, after all, they will do nothing all night but cough and complain. It is also their privilege to find nothing fit to eat, to repeat continually that they have not slept all night, and at the first streaks of day to be able to begin grumbling and scolding every one, and to ask for breakfast. It is their privilege, in fine, to love authority, and yet to hate those who ask their age, though they wish to be honoured on account of their * "" years The poet, after similar observations, speaks plainer than the friar. "You may have been once all that you pretend," he says,

"But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs;

Thou art descending to the darksome grave
Unhonoured and unpitied."

Generalizing, however, far too much, while ascribing to all the miseries that belong through their own fault but to a few, he continues,

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Let man behold the circuit of his fortunes:

The season of the spring dawns like the morning,
Bedewing childhood with unrelish'd beauties
Of gaudy sights; the summer, as the noon,
Shines in delight of youth, and ripens strength

VOL. VII.

* Epit. Dorées, liv. i.

B b

To autumn's manhood; here the evening grows
And knits up all felicity in folly.

Winter at last draws on, the night of age;
Yet still a humour of some novel fancy
Untasted or untried puts off the minute
Of resolution, which should bid farewell
To a vain world of weariness and sorrows."

In order to find the opening through which men, by desiring to correct the vices and miseries incident to old age, can discern the advantage of central principles, it is by no means necessary that we should have any wish to exaggerate the consequence of their influence. It only requires an admission, involving no difficulty, that the faults peculiarly incident to age are precisely those with which Catholicity most resolutely and effectually grapples; and of course, along with this admission, there will be required a calm and unprejudiced observation of facts.

"Rich poverty," says the Baron de Prelle, "that is, detachment and humility with riches, constitutes a great pleasure for the old, when they are rich without loving riches *." Now every one knows that to produce this detachment is one of the prime objects of Catholicism. That it succeeds frequently is evident; and from what a besetting sin of old age, then, does this condition, resulting from central views, proclaim a deliverance! Strabo mentions a saying of Phalereus, that in the Attic mines the diggers worked with as much heart as if they expected to dig up Plutus himself†. An old man may not be naturally apt for such labours, but if no benign influence affect him, he may be often described in the lines of the humorous poet,

"He had roll'd in money like pigs in mud,
Till it seem'd to have enter'd into his blood
By some occult projection;

And his cheeks, instead of a healthy hue,
As yellow as any guinea grew,

Making the common phrase seem true
About a rich complexion +."

Certainly, few men will question that Catholicism, more than any thing else, tends to produce an opposite character, by presenting a different object for ambition from that of being a man of unknown wealth, whose heir, likely to inherit but weak brains, will wish that his father should soon make a journey to Erebus, for the sake of that proverb which proclaims who is the happy son. Nothing, again, more effectually checks that cunning worldliness and vanity which so often degrade the old, than the

*Considerat. sur la Vieillesse.

+ Hood.

+ Lib. iii.

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