friends," they whose life has fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf, must not look there to have. Rooks generally cease to build their nests in aged trees which are in danger of falling before the force of winds that they have no longer sufficient strength to withstand. They forsake them; and the grove that once used to resound with their voices is silent. A similar desertion can be observed when we pass near the old persons who had only such chattering birds for their former friends and dependants. As if afraid of their company, and of being somehow compromised in their approaching end, they all, as if instinctively, fly elsewhere. The dramatic poets, who studied manners, and who lived shortly after the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, seem to entertain a very decided opinion as to its results in robbing old age of its honours. They say,

There is hardly one of these writers who does not make the
same remark. Ben Jonson expresses his impressions thus,-"I
cannot leave to admire the change of manners and the breeding
of our youth, within the kingdom since myself was one. When
I was young age was authority, and a man had then a certain
reverence paid unto his years, that had none due unto his life :
so much the sanctity of some prevailed for others.
But now we
all are fallen." Such results, indeed, were but natural, since, as
we may learn, even from the interlude of Lusty Juventus writ-
ten in the reign of Edward VI., many of the rising generation
were New Gospellers. The old, for their tenacity in regard to
the ancient religion, had been held up to ridicule on the stage,
which had been made a supplement to the pulpit. In that piece,
the devil is introduced lamenting the downfall of superstition,
and saying,-

"The olde people would beleve still in my lawes,
But the yonger sort leade them a contrary way;
They will not beleve, they playnly say,

In old traditions, and made by men,

But they wyll lyve as the Scripture teacheth them.”

"The father was then a foole, and the chyld a preacher."

But without recurring to the extravagances of those revolutionary times, it is evident that whenever the old sentiments of humanity involved in the central faith yield place to the spirit of

innovation in morals, the old tree of all forsaken, is a symbol of the fate which is reserved for the human sire. "Cruel son! How canst thou rip a heart that's cleft already with injuries of time?" Such complaints are not then fantastic. The psalmist pronounced blessed the man whose many children enabled him to meet his enemies at his gate without being confounded; but perhaps then it is when these very children come to it that the old man has greatest cause to feel overwhelmed, and to tremble. "You no longer respect the old,” says a senator addressing his countrymen at an epoch when society seemed to abandon generally the Christian faith; "their words," he adds, "are lost upon you. This, you scornfully reply, is a brave world when a man should be selling land, and not be learning manners." Lands and houses at least obtain no exemption now from having belonged to a father. A friend of the stranger, the learned and accomplished Count de l'Escalopier, possesses the house in the Place-Royale at Paris, which has descended to him from father to son since the year 1612. But these were sons who used to remain standing while their aged parents spoke to them. In the time of my youth," says another eminent philosopher of the same nation, "old age was a dignity, now it is a burden. Old persons formerly were less unhappy and less isolated than now. If they had lost their friends, little else had changed round them. They were not strangers to society. At present, one belated in the world has not only seen die men, but ideas. Principles, manners, tastes, pleasures, pains, sentiments-nothing resembles what he has known." That some ideas, some laws, some manners, some pleasures and tastes should change would cause regret to no wise old men ; but what they will justly deplore, as a consequence of renouncing central principles, is the passing away of old virtues that are indispensable to the peace of their own condition, and to the goodness of those who are connected with them. Yes, there are inhuman whisperings now in many houses of the rich. Sons may not consult astrologers, as in the days of Juvenal, to ascertain how much longer parents are likely to be a burden to them. There may not be a statute, as in Epirus, favouring unnatural heirs, which declares that every man living to fourscore years, and woman to threescore, shall then be cut off as useless to the republic, and that law shall finish what nature lingered at; but complaints are not less heard which recall what was represented by the dramatist of a corrupt age in England :

:

"O lad, here's a spring for young plants to flourish !

The old trees must down that keep the sun from us.'

They who are old may say with the Greek poet, "We bring an accusation against this state, for instead of tenderness and pro

vision at the end of our days, we experience neglect obdurate and rude. You exclude us from your councils; we are as nothing. Is it just that a man bent under the weight of years should yield to every stripling? Old age obtains from you neither veneration nor repose."

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"Oh, time of age! where's that Æneas now,
Who letting all his jewels to the flames;
Forgetting country, kindred, treasure, friends,
Fortunes and all things, save the name of son,

Hew'd out his way through blood, through fire, through arms,
Even all the arm'd streets of bright-burning Troy,

Only to save a father?"

All this is to no purpose, some will reply. We are past school, or we need no Pagan lessons read! Catholicism, meanwhile, to inculcate respect and gratitude for age, has but one voice, of which the ancient poet is an echo, saying,—

"Does the kind root bleed out his livelihood
In parent distribution to his branches,
Adorning them with all his glorious fruits,
Proud that his pride is seen when he's unseen;
And must not gratitude descend again

To comfort his old limbs in fruitless winter?
O yet in noble man reform, reform it,
And make us better than those vegetives,
Whose souls die with them *."

In fine, central principles provide for age a sweet, serene, and even glorious existence, corresponding to

"The setting sun, and music at the close

As the last taste of sweets is sweetest last."

Or, as another poet says,—

"A long summer day, whose shadow shall go down

Like the sunset in the eastern clime, that never knows a frown.” When the sun is descending near the horizon, the very dust that rises from the road seems golden; and as the traveller looks forward through it the ground appears to blend into the brightness of heaven. Such is life in the aged, whom faith inspires.

"For as Apollo each eve doth devise

A new apparelling for western skies,”

so Catholicism, which leaves the varieties of natural character untouched, lends an inexhaustible change of beauty to the declining days of each old person subject to it, and makes the last

*The Old Law.

scene appear to be more lovely than the best and serenest that had been observed before. It invokes a smiling, calm, contented old age, as some great artist calls on Vesper

"To summon all the downiest clouds together

For the sun's purple couch."

Upon the whole, Catholicism, when unmixed with other influences, is found to wear well; under its fostering warmth the old can look on young men, and no way envy their delicious health, pleasure, and strength; all which were once their own, while what they experience now must one day be theirs. After serving them in youth as a beautiful lightsome holiday attire, they find nothing like it to cover them in age; it is found to become them best at every stage of their journey; it is a suit that will last them their lives, and one which, once obtained, secures them against all further want of change. The man who passes, growing old, remarks the fact, and sometimes suffers himself in consequence to be led by that observation to the centre. He perceives how few who turn from it know how to be old. He hears magnified acquiescence in mere nature. He will reply with a poet,

"There's truth in what you say;

But something whispers to my heart
That, as we downward tend,
Lycoris! life requires an art

To which our souls must bend."

That art, he concludes, can be nothing else but the acquirement of central principles in mind and conduct, such as form old men to this type of indulgent wisdom; accordingly, he studies and embraces them, and then feels his mind seated in a rich throne of endless quiet, higher than mortality, and pure as heaven.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ROAD OF OLD AGE (terminated).

ROM this point opens another avenue to the centre, constituted by the natural affinity between old age and Catholicism. The existence of this relationship is easily detected. In the first place, a period of life generally productive of leisure and of thought, attended in many instances with a vast variety of retrospec tive images, must be favourable to a recognition of the truth of

that religion which, while often powerless to persuade the busy and inconsiderate, can never be wholly removed from view of the contemplative, or separated from the historical knowledge and traditions of those who, having achieved the silver livery of advised age, are arrived at their reverence and their chair-days, and who, after paying their debt of labour, find a repose which suits them, and which God blesses-a rest which, as Lacordaire says, is at once their right and their majesty. Mark these seniors seated on the benches which sometimes are placed at the outskirts of a forest, or by the side of the road leading through it, as in that of St. Germain. You perceive how they like its shades, since they even have turned their backs to those who pass in order to have their faces directed to the wood. To prevent old age from considering and meditating when those who pass would lead it from the centre, is indeed the object of some, who like wagtails of the city, as Shirley calls them, no sooner hear the name of Rome but straight they gape as they would eat the pope-birds, however, that the old when contemplative are not inclined to make much on. But to think of banishing all thoughtfulness from those so predisposed to it, is to desire what would be unnatural.

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For what is age

But the holy place of life, chapel of ease
For all men's wearied miseries? and to rob
That of her ornament it is accurst

As from a priest to steal a holy vestment *."

Years," says Chateaubriand, “are like alps. Hardly have you passed the first when you see others rise beyond them—alas! these highest and last mountains are solitary and white." But he would admit that they are favourable to reflection, and that they yield a wide and uninterrupted prospect to supply it with abundant matter for its exercise. Dante borrows an image from those who stand on such an elevation, saying,

"So rov'd my ken, and in its general form

All paradise survey'd."

It is they who have longest observed and longest meditated, who can most easily perceive that, as he says,

Reflected from the summit of the first

That moves, which being hence and vigour takes +."

But memory, again, with the aged may prove a serviceable guide; since the days of youth can seldom have been left without