Quæque meæ semper placuerunt otia menti, Et parvam celebrare domum, veteresque Penates Aspera militiæ juvenis certamina fugi, Nunc senior gladioque latus, scutoque sinistram, What instances might we not produce, also, of activity in charitable and laborious deeds, protracted to the oldest age, within the Catholic Church! whereas, if all principles and motives that have their centre there be renounced, we shall not have long to wait in order to witness how obdurately the old man finishes, while forgetful of all that should embalm his memory. As the poet says, "Degenerat; palmæ veterumque oblitus honorum." Again, we should observe the enlarged conceptions, the benevolence, and kindness, which central principles substitute for that narrow-minded, sour-crabbed morosity which is so apt to creep into the breasts of the old. “His gregarious nature,” says an eminent author, "is one cause of man's superiority over all other animals. A lion lies under a hole in a rock; and if any other lion happen to pass by, they fight. Now, whoever gets a habit of lying under a hole in a rock, and fighting with every gentleman who passes near him, cannot possibly make any progress. Every man's understanding and acquirements, how great and extensive soever they may appear, are made up from the contributions of others." Naturally there seems a tendency in old age to make men choose a ferine solitude, from which they may issue forth at times to attack all who pass, or at least growl at them from a distance. ὡς δύσκολον τὸ γῆρας ἀνθρώποις ἔφυ But the central influence induces other habits in accordance with the interests of the intelligence and of the heart. The exclamation of the poet would not be warranted by the character of the old persons that meet us now, with whose counsels it stands not to fly upon invectives. How sweet and affable rather, we may exclaim, does this old age exhibit itself to all observers, as if it bore a childish overflowing love to all who come across it! But as we may have occasion to return to this subject, let us proceed at once to observe, in the second place, how central * Bacch. 1251. principles tend to remove the moral, and even to alleviate the physical miseries incident to old age. Recurring, as usual, to the forest for its symbolism, we may observe that at this passage of our journey it wears an aspect which seems to correspond with the advance of a late season in the life of man; for some trees here are nearly stripped of their leaves, and the foliage is every where changing its colour. The autumnal tints are stealing over the woods; and the paths, strewed with sear and yellow leaves, exhibit the bright but mournful beauty of October. So it is with those from whom this road derives its title. The sand of many hours has fallen from time's grey glass since we met our rambler on the roads of childhood and of youth, when his hairs grew up beautiful as the ebony, and curled themselves into a thousand pretty caves, for love itself to sit that best delights in darkness. In those days the quaint compliment of the good mother in the Knight of the Burning Pestle might have been addressed to him: "The twelve companies of London cannot match him timber for timber." But all this flower has dropped off. The influence of time, calamity, or sickness, has long ruined that bright fabric nature took such pride to build; and truly it is not wonderful that soft, frail flesh should change, since time wears out the hardest things. "In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure; Recur again for an image to those old wells in the forest of Marly, which once formed a watering-place for the king's horses, and which are now all that remains there of royalty. How worn away and stained is this monument! We have already remarked that a poet finds a resemblance in it to an old man, and Shakspeare uses the same image, when he compares him to "a weather-bitten conduit of many kings' reigns." Charles of Orleans relates a dream which he had on one occasion, anticipating this change in regard to himself. It was Time which under the form of an old man appeared to him, and said, "It was I who delivered you first to childhood, and then to youth, and now I come to place you under reason." "Avisez-vous, ce n'est pas chose fainte, Then," he says of himself, "I woke starting, trembling as the upon the tree, and I said, leaf Car s'il est vray que nature me veuille Mais convendra que tout ennuy m'acueille.' ” Ulysses weeps when he sees Laertes so changed by years*. "I had not seen Cephalus for a long time," says Socrates, speaking of the company he found with Polemarque," and he seemed to me as grown very old +." When the brothers of St. Placidus came to Sicily in order to visit him, Gordianus says that "at first they did not recognize him, because having been offered so young to St. Benedict, since which time they had never seen him, the change from boyhood, and that effected by all that he had since undergone, rendered it difficult for them to believe that it could be the same person." St. Gregory, in his last years, wrote to the Monk Secundinus, saying, "You must know, dearest son, that I am pressed with such pains of the gout, and with so many tumults of cares, that, although I never remember that I was any thing, I can yet clearly perceive that I am not what I was ." A little later, writing to Maximian, a bishop of Arabia, the same great pope had to tell harder truths respecting himself. "I have not," he says, "been able now for a long time to rise from my bed. In brief, the infection of the noxious humour has so pervaded me, that to live is for me a punishment, and I anxiously expect death, which I believe is the only remedy for my sufferings §." To Rusticianus also he makes the same complaints-which furnish, by the way, an instance to prove that the supreme pontiff, as well as the common Christian, may adopt without offence the style and language of the classicsfor the words of St. Gregory seem but an echo of the lines, "Non sum qui fueram: quid inanem proteris umbram? Me quoque, quem noras olim, non esse memento." We often speak of things deeply affecting ourselves in a very light, careless way, without appearing to feel what they signify. There is an instance of this in the Homeric farewell, Χαῖρέ μοι,—διαμπερές, εἰσόκε γῆρας Ελθῃ καὶ θάνατος τά τ' ἐπ' ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται [1. For though there is nothing easier than to say good-bye, when upon the threshold of a long absence, it is a fearful thing to xxiv. 232. Lib. vii. Indict. 2, Ep. † De Repub. i. § Lib. ix. ep. 27. || xiii. 60. think of the moment when we shall meet again and compare notes, and of all the changes that will have taken place in the interim. Such farewells savour more of eternity than of life. "I had seen Madame de Staël a child," says Simond, "and I saw her again on her deathbed." The meeting in that instance was too late; but come as it may, it will certainly bring with it recollections that only very flinty bosoms can endure unmoved. The poet represents the scene that may ensue : "Lead us from hence; where we may leisurely Perform'd in the wide gap of time, since first But the answer with some who stand as we do in the forest might be a silent pointing to the last vestiges that the eye can discover of some aged, ruined tree. Follow all the periods in the life of an oak, from the moment when it rises out of the ground with two little green leaves, till the day when all that is left of it is a long black trace, which is the dust of its heart; not much more, perhaps, will be found remaining of the man breathing out his frame like dust, falling all to pieces as if about to be made his own grave, and nothing of him left but memories which seem to burn his heart to ashes. 66 'O ruin'd piece of nature! this giant world Homer seems to think that the sufferings of the old are most worthy of compassion : τοῦτο δὴ οἴκτιστον πέλεται δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσιν * At all events there is no denying that their state partakes, in no scanty measure, of the misery incident to human life in all its stages; and well may the poet, describing what Ulysses saw in the shades, say, in alluding to some of them, πολύτλητοί τε γέροντες †. Youth has its sorrows: who has not felt how intense they can be? Manhood, when well inspired, can hardly be distinguished from it, either in its gleams or shadows. 66 Sed jam felicior ætas Terga dedit, tremuloque gradu venit ægra senectus +." It would be long to observe the melancholy pictures of old age which the ancient poets and philosophers produce. The lines of Euripides in the Hecuba, of Juvenal, and others, will recur to the memory of many; and the modern complaints resemble Met. xiv. * xxii. 76. + xi. 38. them. The Florentine painter, Jacopo da Puntormo, being employed to invent decorations for a triumph significant of human life in its different states, inscribed the word Erimus on the chariot which was to convey youth; Sumus on that reserved for manhood; and Fuimus on the last, in which the aged were to be seated. Pope Innocent III., no fantastic artist or romantic writer, is not disposed to take a different view of the last period of life on earth. "Few men," saith he, "attain their fortieth year, a very few their sixtieth; and what infirmities of body and mind are the heritage of old age! How painful is life then! Have men desired wisdom and science? then what watchings, troubles, and labours have been their lot! and how little, after all, is the knowledge that they have gained! Are they married? then what necessities encompass them! Life is a military service; it is surrounded on all sides by enemies and dangers. Death incessantly threatens us; we tremble for friends and relations. Before we expect it, the misfortune arrives, the infirmity seizes us, and the generations of the world since it began have not sufficed to discover all the kinds of suffering to which the fragility of man is liable." The poet, therefore, must be excused when he says, "And next in order sad old age we found; There heard we him, with broke and hollow plaint, This morbid regret for departed youth constituted, in fact, one of the natural miseries of old age. Sad lamentations are breathed under these boughs at this pass of the road. Oh, call back yesterday! bid time return, and thou shalt be adored. "Ah me, my friend! it will not, will not last, This fairy scene, that cheats our youthful eyes! • Sackville. |