The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-29 00:00:00

Octogenarians and Nonagenarians,

Lord Palmerston, who completed his seventy-
ninth year on Tuesday, and who, if any man can,
may be taken as a thorough type of the working
statesman, is still the gay, buoyant, ever-youthful
hero of debate, because of his active interest and
participation in the affairs of the time. Leigh
Hurt, who wcs born the day before Palmerston, and
who may stand as a perfect specimen of the pure
literary man, fell short of seventy-five, though his
theoretical interest in all kinds of questions was con-
siderable. Of the Lake poets and essayists, Words-
worth was the only one who died really old, Rogers
—to speak of another set of authors—lived to be
ninety-two; but then Rogers was a man
abroad in society, and very little of a dreamer
by the Lethean streams of Helicon. Walter
Savage Landor, still surviving at nearly
ninety, is a case against us; but he is con-
spicuous as an exception. Goethe and Humboldt,
in their 85th year, showed, however, no diminution
of their mental vigour; and Hobbes went on writing
politics, philosophy, and poetry, up to his 92d
year, in which he died.
Intellectual wrestling, or golf-playing, seems to
be the greatest aid to length of years that we can
identify as such. The statesman is "always in a
triumph or a fight ;" and where this does not ex-
haust the system (as it does in the physically feeble)
it seems actually to stimulate, intensify, and prolong
the secret energies of being, There are measures to
be carried, or to be defeated, on the success or failure
of which the man has set his heart ; there is a
party to be served, and another party to he out-
witted end out-maneouvred, or met openly in the
lists, " Shall this dearly cherished object fail for
want of trying ? Shall that other succeed because I,
a party leader whom my party can't well do without,
choose lazily to give up the battle, and slink away
to my arm-chair and slippers ? The fight is still
proceeding; the enemy is strong, and threatens to
outflank us; is this a time for rest ?" These are
considerations which rally all the forces of life, as
the sound of a pibroch is said to rally the Highland
regiments whenever for a moment they are driven
back and disheartened. The old statesman con-
tinues to live because he has a motive for living, or
rather many motives, which will not suffer him to
sta grate. The mere desire to live is much ; but
there must be a specific object to live for—some-
thing in the future whereon our gaze is earnestly
fixed—something towards which we direct all the
capacities of the soul. This is more the case with
lawyers and statesmen than with any other
class. Bishops often live to an extreme
age ; but they are the statesmen of the
ecclesiastical world, and are kept alive by
precisely the same influencee. The Biship of
Exeter is no‘v 86, and bids fair to rival Lord Lynd-
hurst in length of days. It is sometimes the same
with great soldiers and sailors. Lord Combermere,
who must be 90 or more—who was an officer in the
British army when Robespierre was heading the
Reign of Terror, and a cavalry general as far back
as the Peninsular war—has been in the thick of
affairs all his Life, and therefore comes within the
conditions to which we are alluding. The service
of the State, in some capacity or other, seems to be
your true elixir vita. Nestor, we are persuaded,
was a myth, embodying the idea that to be a prime
minister, or a lord chancellor, or a bishop, or a
field-marshal, or in some other way a leader of men,
is the surest me a's of living to be very old. The
poets say that the eloquent adviser of the Greeks
during the Trojan war survived 3 generations of men.
It has been disputed whether this means that he
lived to be three hundred, or only ninety, counting
thirty years as the average of a generation ; but the
latter will serve. Homer, in writing of Nestor, fore-
shadowed Lyndhurst, Lansdowne, and Brougham.
Doge Dandolo, when above ninety, and blind, con-
quered Constantinople, and reigned there for two
years. When Brennus and his Gauls invaded Rome,
they found a senate of old men seated in their ivory
chairs, and recoiled for a moment, awe-struck, from
such an assemblage of legislative antiquities. It
has been so in all times and countries. Your states-
mail is constantly living to be old, and, when old,
is always to be found repelling wild irruptions.
Talleyrand lasted to eighty-four, and Metternich to
eighty-six. Nesselrode, the Russian, and General
Cass, the American, are both instances of longeveus
politicians. The Americans are not remarkable for
long life; but the public men of the Now World
contrive to hold out as well as their congeners in
Europe. John Adams, the fellow-labourer of
Washington, lived to be 91 ; his friend Jefferson,
who died the same day, was 83. Josiah Quincy,
who wrote a letter the other day about the present
born, like Lyndhurst, a British subject in Ame-
is of Lord Lyndhurst's age. He was
sritcrau,ggbleefore the Declaration of Independence, and
has been an active politician. General Scott and
Mr. Buchanan still link the stormy present of the
United States with the early part of the century,
when all seemed smooth and safe ahead. Eng-
land has invariably been remarkable in this
respect. " Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lan-
caster," was but the forerunner of a line of aged
counsellors. Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burlelgh was
Prime Minister of England for more than fifty
years ; and Sackville, Lord Dorset, reached the age
of eighty. But Continental nations have shared the
honour with us in equal proportions. Sully was
eighty-two when he died ; and Andrea Doria ninety.
four, though his life was one unrestiog contest.
Prince Adam Czertoryski must have been more
than ninety when, but recently, he laid down
the burden of his sorrows and his exile. Among
the ancients, Cato lived to be eighty-five; and
Isocrates, the " old man eloquent," whose spin,
was broken down by the news of the fatal battle
of Cbeeronea, starved himself to death in his
ninety-ninth year, and even then, if we may credit
tho histories, had strength enough to withstand his
voluntary abstention from food for four days.
Yet, after all, the few special instances of longe.
vity which seem to border on the preternatural are
not to be found among statesmen, or men of intel-
lect of any kind whatever. Old Parr, who is said
to have lived to be a hundred and fifty, and old Jen-
kins, who seems to have been nearly twenty year:
older still, were persons of humble birth and small
intellectual capacity. We cannot call to mind
any man of eminence -- even of a small
degree of eminence—who passed the age of a
hundred, with the exception of Macklin, the
actor and dramatist, who did not finally quit the
stage till he was at least ninety-nine, and lament
ably broke down, from sheer lack of memory, while
playing Shyleck. Anacreon might have lived to be
as old, had the grape stone spared him ; but it
didn't. Titian got on to ninety-six, or, as some say,
ninety-nine; but there he stopped. Macklin has it
all to himself as an intellectual centenarian. H.
was an Irishman ; and it is noteworthy that, at the
present day, the most remarkable instances of longe-
vity are to be found among the Irish poor- Lynd-
burst, too, was Irish by blood; but the actor heat
him by sixteen years, dying at a hundred and seven.
Fancy a peer at a hundred years old getting on he
legs to address the blouse of Lords, and losing the
thread of his discourse !—_London Talc"

MR. CUI3ITT, M.P.—Yeaterday morning accounts
were received in town of the dangerous illness of Mr. Wm.
Cubitt, M.P. for Andover. The hon. gentleman is at his seat,
Penton Lodge, near Andover, Hants. The hon. gentleman.
who is in his 73d year, has for some time been ailing, but
no fear was entertained until within the past few days.

THE HEAD.
OF TIIE HOUSE OF MACMAIION, the
Marquis Charles MacMahon, nephew of the Duke of Ma-
genta, has just died, at the age of 35, after three years of
14teilBe ouffering.