The Sun.
London, England, 1863-12-30 00:00:00

Consoling Thoughts in Praise of Old Age.

It seems to us, therefore, that, a great deal of un-
necessary pity has been thrown away upon old age.
We begin at school reading Cicero's treatise, hear-
ing him talk with Scipio and Loalins ; we hear
much about poor old men ; we are taught to admire
the vigour, quickness, and capacity of youth and
manhood. We lose sight of the wisdom which age
brings even to the most foolish. We think that a
circumscribed sphere must necessarily be an un-
happy one. It is not always so. What one aban-
dons in growing old is, perhaps, after all not worth
having. The chief part of youth is but excitement;
often both unwise and unhealthy. The same pen
which has written, with a morbid feeling, that
" there is a class of beings who do grow old in their
youth and die ere middle age," tells us also that
" the best of life is but intoxication." That passes
away. The man who has grown old does not care
about it. The author at that period has no feverish
excitement about seeing himself in print ; he does
not hunt newspapers for reviews and notices, He
is content to wait ; he knows what fame is worth.
The obscure man of science, who has been wishing
to make the world better and wiser; the struggling
curate, the poor and hard-tried man of Ged ; the
enthusiastic re'ormer, who has watched the sadly
slow dawning of progress and liberty; the artist,
whose dream of beauty slowly fades before his dim
eyes—all lay down their feverish wishes as they
advance in life, forget the bright ideal
which they cannot reach, and embrace
the more imperfect real. We speak not
here of the assured Christian. He, from the noblest
pinnacle of faith, beholds a promied land, and is
eager to reach it ; he prays " to be delivered from
the body of this death ;" but we write of those
humbler, perhaps more human souls, with whom
increasing age each day treads down an illusion.
All feverish wishes, raw and inconclusive desires,
have died down, and a calm beauty and peace sur-
vive; passions are dead, temptations weakened. or
conquered, experience has been won ; selfish inte-
rests are widened into universal ones; vain, idle
hopes have merged into a former faith or a complete
knowledge; and more light has broken in upon the
soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed " through
I chinks which Time has made." . . .

We are no longer the fools of time and error.
We are leaving by slow degrees the old world ; we
stand upon the threshold of the new ; not without
hope, but without fear, in an exceedingly natural
position, with nothing strange or doubtful about it;
with our domain drawn within a narrow circle, but
equal to our power. Muscular strength, organic
instincts are all gone; but what then ? We do not
want them; we are getting ready for the great
change, one which is just as necessary as it was to
be born ; and to a little child, perhaps one is not a
whit more painful than the other—perhaps not so
painful. The wheels of Time have brought us to the
goal ; we are about to rest while others labour
k! to
t
stay at home while others wander. tough
to
to
last the mysterious door—are we to be pale -
be envied ?-7 he Gentle Life.

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