fresh evidence of the truth of central principles, yielded in a personal manner with new examples of the evil of disregarding them; and therefore with especial reference to such things each old man might say, Multaque præsens Tempore tam longo vidi, multa auribus hausi *." Or with Nestor, 66 Quamvis obstet mihi longa vetustas Multaque me fugiant primis spectacula sub annis Helvius Marcia Formianus, when very old, accusing Libo before the censors, and Pompey, in disparagement of his years, saying that he had come from the dead to accuse, "You are right, Pompey," he replied, "I come from the dead to accuse Libo; but while staying with them I saw Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus stained with blood and weeping, because nobly born, of innocent life, and a lover of his country, he had been slain in the flower of his youth by your orders. I saw the wounded Brutus, victim of your cruelty. I saw Cn. Carbo, the defender of your boyhood and of your father's goods, bound in chains by your command and slain, against all law and justice. I saw the prætorian man, Perperna, execrating your barbarity ." One who returns thus from the dead even in our age, however reluctant he may be to accuse, has somewhat perhaps to recount of the sufferings to which the profession of Catholicity had exposed some of the best and greatest men. Without the least disposition to blame any one, or to revive odious memories for the sake of reproaching the living, he, a modern Formianus, might say to his intimate friend, "I have seen a Douglas, a bishop, tried for his life on the charge of saying mass, and only saved by an ingenious stratagem of Mansfield, the judge,-Emonii proceres aderant, aderamus et ipsi. I have seen London on the point of being burnt and pillaged by those who, at the voice of a fanatical nobleman invoking the Bible, accused the king of favouring popery. I have seen a little later the whole clergy of France embracing death or exile rather than take an oath opposed to Catholicism. I have seen nations pledged to wage what they proclaimed as an eternal war against it; but I have seen them," he will add, "disappointed and baffled." "For know, that all these strict combined heads, Have proved but glassen hammers-they are broken." Met. xiv. 8. + xii. 6. Val. Max. lib. vi. Dugald Stewart supposes that the decay of memory observable in old men proceeds as frequently from the very little interest they take in what is passing around them, as from any bodily decay by which their powers of mind are weakened. That interest, however, which they take in the past may conduce greatly, for reasons already suggested, to their facility of access to the centre. The Greek poet celebrates the force of memory in old age; and Catholicism, it must be confessed, is more or less wound up with nearly all memories, whether of peace or war, of commerce or diplomacy, of law or literature, of love or of devotion. The natural impression of the aged, resulting from familiarity with the past, will be in favour of standing, so far as religious principles are concerned, on the ancient ways, and of walking in them. "Standum," they will say, 66 super semitas antiquas, et in eis ambulandum-ita sane jucundum ac suave intra castissimos sacræ vetustatis limites libere se coarctaret." If religion should have lost the favour and protection of the state and of the times, they will not lose their former attachment to it. Their faith will not diminish on that account, Spreads and thrives better in some piteous ruin To wind them up into a full content." Manhood, for a while, may jeer and scoff at reverent antiquity in matters of religion, but age replies, "You but blow out a taper that would light your understanding, though you may think that it is burnt down in the socket." Shirley, ridiculing the spirit of the reformers, makes Maslin say, "Let me see, how shall I consume my wealth? I must do something to shame the chronicles. Silence! I'll build another town in every country; in midst of that a most magnificent college, to entertain men of most eminent wit, to invent new religions;" and Beaumont and Fletcher represent Pedant applying to Forobosco, a conjurer, to help him in a similar project. "I am a schoolmaster, sir," he says, "and would fain confer with you about erecting four new sects of religion at Amsterdam. I assure you I would get a great deal of money by it. It is about these four new sects I come to you; 'tis a devil of your raising must invent 'em; I confess I am too weak to compass it. Let but your devil set them a-foot once, I have weavers, and gingerbread-makers, and mighty aquavitæ men, shall set them a-going." Though "the times may want religion extremely," old age will not pronounce these *Herc. furens. Regula Fratrum Ord. SS. Trinit. projects excellent. Nothing, in its judgment, can equal the folly of a man making a religion, or taking up that of another man's making. Catholicism, on the other hand, will always appear to it to be like a great work of nature, which one has only to accept as one finds it, wonder at it as much as one may. The natural office of the old is not to invent or sanction invention in this sphere, but to keep lighted the torch of traditional wisdom as of faith; and unless extraordinary circumstances prevent them, they are generally faithful to pass it to others burning," Et quasi cursores vitaï lampada trahunt." In the second place, old age being favourable to natural devotion, must consequently enjoy an exemption from many obstacles in the way of proceeding to the centre. St. Augustin compares old age to the aurora; and the Baron de Prelle, after citing his words, proceeds to develope the idea, saying, " It is, in fact, the dawn of that eternal day which is to be enjoyed in the future life; and as the aurora dissipates the darkness of night, so age corrects the passions, and prepares man for the pure joy of everlasting felicity." Those "painted flies that with man's summer take life and heat, buzzing about his blossoms, and which, when growing full, turn to caterpillars, gnawing the root that gave them life—are unable to do harm in the clear, pure atmosphere of age. In manhood the mind is often so much occupied with private, or professional, or public affairs, that all thoughts about matters relating to another existence are excluded; whereas, on growing old, men are frequently found to follow advice like that of Alanus, saying, "Aufer ab his mentem, miserosque videto dolores 66 There are men who, having long slept in the dull lethargy of lost security, can only be awakened and moved to take a central direction by the preaching of " that bold missioner with a white beard, called Time." At that voice truth comes naked and sabre-like against the heart:" a sense of earthly mutability then seems at last to rouse them. They say to themselves, like the poet, "The forests, rocks, fields, rivers, and shores-all created things are changed by time. At present this life, which flies, and the place and time teach me another path-that which leads to heaven, where one gathers fruits, and not flowers and leaves alone. I seek, and it is time I should seek, another love, another light, and another way across other heights to mount to heaven." "The almond-tree and the pear-tree," says Pliny, 66 are most Lib. Parab. fruitful in old age *." "The wild pear-trees," say foresters, "when hollow, ought to be let to stand till the winds overthrow them; for when hollow thus and old they bear more fruit, and are more profitable for the pasture of animals +." On the road from Martel to Gramat is to be seen a colossal walnut-tree at least three hundred years old. It is only fifty-five feet high, but it sends out immense lateral branches, and bears on an average each year fifteen sacks of walnuts. Observations of this kind made in the woods supply, therefore, many analogies with the phenomena of human life, which in old age can be very produc tive in its forests of piety, of which no one can be long at a loss to find the true, natural, and central root. "Crescit ætate pulchritudo animorum," says Antonio Perez, "quantum minuitur eorundem corporum venustas." Johnson, with all his love for the young, had the same conviction, while Montaigne and Lord Chesterfield, differing in this respect from the opinion of observant men in all ages, expressed the contrary. Mystic authors teach," says Father Baker, "that the soul will hardly arrive unto the active union and experimental perception of God's presence in her, till almost a declining age-since till such age there will remain too much unstableness in the inward senses, which will hinder that quietness and composedness of mind necessary to such a union." The old, being thus led by natural piety towards a divine state, can hardly fail to see fall before them many obstacles that interpose between others and the issue to that centre where religion, from the beginning of the world, has been found. It may be expected that in the absence of extraordinary causes to bias their opinions, they will deem it no great mistake if men should feel disposed to comply with the oracular voice and seek their ancient mother. But he who, in a spiritual sense, repeats words like those of Apollo, tells 66 "Qui petere antiquam matrem cognataque jussit Littora," you, in fact, to seek that original universal society which, after passing from its patriarchal and Jewish forms, was consti tuted in a more spiritual sense by the apostles, and propagated throughout the whole world by their successors; therefore, in regard to its facility for acquiescing in the divine method of instructing men in religion, old age may be seen to have affinity with Catholicism, which has always existed for the same purpose of saving mankind by other means besides private reading and private judgment, so that *N. H. xvi. 50. + Burgsdorf, Manuel forestier. Sancta Sophia, 33. Again, old age being favourable to wisdom, possesses obviously a great advantage in regard to the facility of recognizing the central truth. In the forest of life it is the snares of hunters which render the ways dangerous for intelligences, since all the senses can be more or less employed to capture them. As they advance towards the centre, there are pit-falls dug on this side, and wires laid skilfully on that, so that the young and careless can often become a prey to error's emissaries, the cause of whose zeal will ever be a mystery; but to the aged it is not so easy to misrepresent things that relate to religion or the interests of a future life. All old animals are much more sagacious, and with much more difficulty caught in traps than young animals. An old wolf or an old fox will walk round a trap twenty times, examining every circumstance with the utmost attention, and those who deceive them are only enabled to do so by using every possible care and circumspection. So it is with these old men, when invited to stop and yield assent to novelties in religion. Thus there is a trap laid in some places to discourage all from proceeding to the centre, by representing those who pass to its sphere as perverse young persons, who forsake the religion of their noble country, pernicious spirits, and men of pestilent purpose, meanly affected unto the state they live in, whose fortunes should be crossed, endeavours frustrated, and antagonists thanked by all the great men of the time for breeding jealousies of them throughout the nation; but the old observer, even where the light may rather seem to steal in than be permitted, goes round this trap, and says, Though in these cases you are in labour to push names, ancient love, kindred out of your memory, and in the self-same place to seat something you would confound, I can detect in those who so offend you a spirit that may be qualified very differently; for though absolute sense in every thing, and above all moderation, is not to be expected from every little goose who sacrifices friends, and, for aught he knows or cares at the time, perhaps fortune, through a chivalrous feeling of honour, I think it is through horror of injustice, and detestation of despotism, and aversion to the spirit of contradiction, and unwillingness to be singular and unlike the commonalty, that these youths, making past times present, have chosen to remain faithful to the old religion, and adhere with the common people and those who were the best and most generous of the land to the faith that was first delivered to the country of Bede and Alfred. They merely think, as it is very natural at their age to think, that because the policy of an old queen, long since dead and |