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Old age in common secular life, though solitary, and liable perhaps sometimes to selfish concentration of thoughts, will hardly feel itself so drawn to the wisdom which professes to ignore this truth, as to become unwilling to lose its strains, and exchange them for what is found in Catholic churches-sacred offices, vigils, festivals, conferences for visiting the poor, and those innumerable other provisions which she offers with a view to preparation for a happier existence. Life can hardly become dearer to the possessor of such theology as is contained in the Mahâbhârata, or sacred books of Brahmins, in which it is taught that perfection in wisdom consists in the absence of love. An old man no doubt is changed from what he once was; but can the very life be gone out of his heart? Can he desire to be the unprofitable sign of nothing, the veriest drone, and sleep away the remainder of his days, "causing thought to cancel pleasure, making a dark forehead, bent upon truth, the rock on which all affection is to split, wasting life in one long sigh, and never beholding a gentle face turned gently upon his ?" No, no! when it comes to this pass, though you promise days happy as the gold coin can invent without such aid, he can never be again in love with a wish; when all trace of the summer of his years is gone, and earth for him has buried every flower, he is ready to shake hands with Time, and consult about what is beyond it. It must be a new world that can attract him, and something different from all that is left to him in the old one, though it were philosophy itself in person, with its abominable beard. In such considerations, one excepts, of course, those who, by a celestial vocation, have been all through life directed, animated, and consoled otherwise than ordinary mortals; and that there are such men every where is, as we found upon another road, an acknowledged fact, and an experimental certainty. One excepts, also, those, forming, perhaps, no inconsiderable class of mankind, to whom there is allusion in a quarter too high to be named here, as being, by natural inclination and habits, invulnerable to the spell of which one speaks, and averse to the whole character which it forms: one speaks only of ordinary mortals, the " laity of noble love," as our ancient poets call them. These, too, indeed, happily have also a supernatural object proposed to them, and may have supernatural consolations to sustain them; but by the very fact of its origin, the supernatural cannot bind them to this earth, or counteract the natural tendency of years. The chill air of isolation, therefore, with the common mortal must do its work. Is there no one left here below to love him as he used to be loved once, when he could outwake the nightingale, outwatch an usurer, and outwalk him, too, stalk like a ghost that haunted about a treasure, and all that fancied treasure it was love? Then most undoubtedly this change in his relation to

others, were not his thoughts called elsewhere, would smite his lonesome heart more than all misery; and then it would not be the hearing such sentences of Brahmins, or as Plato proposes with more reason, some rhapsody recited from the Iliad or the Odyssey, that could rivet his wishes to the limits of this world*, or cause him to turn with aversion from every consideration that relates to another. He will say with Calis, in our old play,

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Alas! I must love nothing;

Nothing that loves again must I be bless'd with!
The gentle vine climbs up the oak, and clips him,
And when the stroke comes, yet they fall together.
Death, Death must I enjoy, and love him!"

His song will be,

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O for its folly!

A dancing step and a laughing eye;
Youth may be silly-
Wisdom is chilly,-

What can an old man do but die ?"

We are all,” says Frederic, in 'The Chances,' "like sea cards; all our endeavours and our motions (as they do to the north still point at beauty." But it has been said, that the root of al) that inspires us with a sense of beauty and of happiness onl earth lies in our desire of love; that the mind makes a secret reference to it even in contemplating a beautiful edifice, or landscape, or sky, and that it is only when they affect us as love does, that we consider them beautiful. Therefore if love be altogether past away, there is nothing left on earth to point or direct our movements. When years heap their withered hours like leaves on our decay; when no association of ideas can exist between the present world and that which the heart yearns for, -that which was pronounced by the Creator as necessary for the work of his hands in Paradise; when man, in short, is left alone, without sympathy, without love, without a visible companion that cares for him otherwise than for the soul of a stranger, he becomes sensible that his happiness cannot be interested in his dismissing all thoughts about first principles, and protracting his

* De Legibus, lib. ii.

stay still longer upon an earth that for him is grown so cold. You know what the poet says, without ever having been blamed, that I am aware of, for saying it,—

"Soon may I follow

When friendships decay,

And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie wither'd

And fond ones are flown,

Oh! who would inhabit

This bleak world alone?"

Ay, truly, who would? Well, then, grim censor, for instinctively one fears your presence, pardon the steps which lead to a result that even you will approve of; for then there is no longer an obstacle to the thought of eternity, by means of which central principles obtain their victory. Then, if not before, man learns in a kind of practical familiar manner, that the great invisible God, who in Catholicism is all in all, its beginning and its end, is, notwithstanding the impenetrable mystery that envelopes his omnipresence, the friend of friends, the companion of companions, the only one that endures, the only one even, perhaps, that lasts out his life, the only one who knows all his secrets, whom he has always known, and who has always known him. No other heart remembers the adventures, joys, and sorrows, of his youth and manhood; no one else is left to approve of what might pass for blameless in them, or to pardon what assuredly merited reprobation. The days of love may be passed away; but He who witnessed and ordained them is not passed away. One is remaining who knew the young man and his innocent companion-one eterna lfriend who knew both, who was with them when the lover sat by the side of the guide and charmer of his youth; who was with them when they boated, when they sauntered, when they reposed on the bank where wild-flowers grew who noted all the raptures of their heart which his creative hand imparted to them, counted all the tears, marked all the silent anguish of their chequered state, as men and women exiled from Paradise; and so now, in that divine reten. tive bosom the desolate hopes in reality, and not in a dream, to recover all that was inestimable without its alloy, the rose without the thorn, the friend of sweetest intimacy without the separation, the playmate without weariness, the companion without leave-taking, the loved one without death. For think not that the souls, too, when they depart hence are old and loveless. No, sure; 'tis ever youth there; Time and Death follow our flesh no more; and that forced opinion that spirits have no affections I believe not. There must be love; hereafter there

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is love." "Old age," says a French writer, "is a traveller by night; the earth is hidden; it sees only the sky, shining with stars over its head." "Which is the happiest season of life?" was the question asked at a festal party, when the host, upon whom was the burden of fourscore years, replied, "You know our forest. When the spring comes, and in the soft air the buds are breaking on the trees, and they are covered with blossoms, I think, How beautiful is spring! And when the summer comes, and covers the trees with its heavy foliage, and singing birds are among the branches, I think, How beautiful is summer! When the autumn loads them with golden fruit, and their leaves bear the gorgeous tint of frost, I think, How beautiful is autumn! And it is sere winter, and there is neither foliage nor fruit, then I look up, through the leafless branches, as I never could until now, and see the stars shine!" Such old age can see also the stars of the spiritual firmament shining for its direction; it can more easily see the beacon of faith, the column of fire, whose light's reflexion shall create a day in the Cimmerian valleys. It can recognize, in other words, the Catholic church, which opens a blissful passage to that realm where night doth never spread "Her ebon wings; but daylight's always there; And one blest season crowns th' eternal year.'

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So then at length, if not before, as undeceived it goes its way. But, lo! this night of old age, that proves to be so useful and so beautiful, is spent. The dawn of the natural morning is symbolical of what awaits those who have journeyed through that night, though when it is said, in reference to death,

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Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about
Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray,"

we should reply, in consideration of the far more glorious phenomena that we hope to witness on the road that next awaits us,

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Blush, gray-ey'd morn, and spread

Thy purple shame upon the mountain-tops!
Or pale thyself with envy, since here comes
A brighter herald than the dull-ey'd star
That lights thee up."

VOL. VII.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE ROAD OF THE TOMBS.

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T is the remark of an ancient Italian writer, that when Piero di Cosimo represented at Florence, in a kind of dramatic show, the Triumph of Death, which was altogether strange and terrible, the colossal figure of Death bearing the scythe, standing on a funeral black car, which moved on between covered tombs that opened as he passed, and displayed skeletons raising themselves at the sound of a plaintive music summoning them, while troops of dead on horseback followed, chanting the Miserere, the spectacle, though so lugubrious, gave no small pleasure to the people, and proved, contrary to what one might have supposed, an acceptable provision for the amusements of the Carnival; for besides that it was within the reach of every man's comprehension, it is certain, he adds, "that the people, as in their food they sometimes prefer sharp and bitter savours, so in their pastimes are they attracted by things mournful, which, when presented with art and judgment, do most wonderfully delight the human heart." All nature seems to participate in this feeling.

"What bird so sings, yet so does wail?
"Tis Philomel, the nightingale ;
Jugg, jugg, jugg, terue, she cries,

And, hating earth, to heaven she flies."

As far as mankind are concerned, the remark of Vasari-for it is he who makes it can be daily verified if we mix with the lower classes of the community, the sum of all whose poor faults with which so often they are charged is found to be a merry heart, showing how we should be right in generalizing from what Montague says in the Honest Man's Fortune:

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When I had store of money,

I simper'd sometime, and spoke wondrous wise,
But never laugh'd outright; now I am empty

My heart sounds like a bell, and strikes at both sides."

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