country in Europe, can present an occasional instance of a length of life, rarely paralleled in our days, among the weather-beaten citizens of her navy.*

Ireland, with all the eccentricities and imprudences of at least some of her children, can maintain a competition with any other nation in this vivacious blessing ;t and even a succession of such ultra long-livers.‡

But in another instance, the age stated is so uncommonly great, that, without a careful examination and strong evidence, direct or collateral, it cannot be taken as an authenticated fact. I therefore merely mention it as it appears in the public newspapers, that those who have connexions in Cork, and are interested by such a circumstance, may inquire into the proof of its reality.§

1820; he entered the Austrian army in 1710, at the age of eight, as a fifer, and had served till 1797, for eighty-five years effectively, and after that among the Invalids for twenty-three years, having thus been a soldier for one hundred and ten years. He had served both on sea and land. His numerous campaigus never shook his constitution. He always preserved his gayety. Avoiding violent passion, he lived in great simplicity of manners, and with a remarkable chastity. His father had reached one hundred and five, and his paternal uncle one hundred and seven."--Bull. Univ., 1831, p. 127.

* "There is now living at Dort a sailor named Conrad Vancouver, who on the 20th of last month reached the age of one hundred and thirty-five years. This is the oldest man in existence in Europe."-Dutch periodical, quoted in Standard, 22d Sept., 1834.

"Died at Coolcarney, on Wednesday last, near Ballina, Walter Reape, aged one hundred and fifteen years. He was born in the reign of George I., in the townland of Carrowreagh, where he ended his existence. His health and memory were remarkably good."-Ballina Impartial, June, 1834. Another of one hundred and fourteen is mentioned in the Gent. Mag., Feb., 1836.

"Mr. Luke Gibson, of Temple Patrick, states that he has discovered in the township of Ballynaman, within one mile of Glasslough, Cicely Cooney, better known by the name of Cicely Battle. She is one hundred and thirty years of age. Her youngest daughter is eighty. She never took a doctor's drug in all her life, nor was bled. She is perfectly free from affections in her chest. During the last century of her life she has been a stranger to pain. Her pulse does not exceed seventy.

"Her grandfather died at the age of one hundred and twenty-nine. Her father, John Cooney, was bred in the town of Donegal, and followed the army of James to Mayo, where he died, in the one hundred and twentieth year of his age."-Scotch Newspaper, quoted in Standard, 8th Jan., 1833.

"On 25th December last (1834), Denis M'Kinley, of Sheans, near Ballycastle, departed this life, aged ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS. He never had a day's sickness, could read the smallest print without spectacles, usually rose at three o'clock in the morning, and went to bed with the family. He died on the same day of the month

*

We find longevity also in South Africa, so that neither climate, nor the rude state of poverty that may accompany its locality, prevents its occurrence. It is natural that North America should not be without her share of this vital advantage when others exhibit it; and such statements as are analogous to human experience elsewhere may, in justice to the general prevalence of social veracity, be admitted. But as some of her citizens are more fond of the marvellous than of the accurate, she must not be offended if more precise evidence is required for her extraordinary narratives. ◊

These unusual individuals appear also in France, where one three years ago had reached one hundred and twenty. Scotland has her examples likewise;¶ and the more we

and the same month on which he was born. He was temperate in liv ing."-Cork Constitution, cited in Morning Herald, 21st Feb., 1835.

As this age exceeds almost all others, it is desirable to have more satisfactory evidence about it. But as improbability is no actual disproof, and the subject is curious, it is worth an inquiry to those who may have the opportunity.

* Captain Owen remarks of the Island of Abdul Koory, near Locotra, "The natives were miserably poor. One old native came on board; he said he was one hundred years of age, and remembered some events that had occurred eighty years back."-Owen's Voyage, vol. i., p. 351.

"On 2d Feb., 1834, in Wake County, North Carolina, aged about ninety, Mr. Jesse Wale, son of Mr. Arthur Wale, who is living at the advanced age of one hundred and fifteen. The son was in the revolution with his father. His death was caused by a fall."-Durham Advertiser, April, 1834. The "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1767 mentioned Francis Ange as then dying in Maryland at the age of one hundred and thirty-four. If Mr. Turner means to say that a larger proportion of American cit izens than of the people in other countries are "more fond of the marvellous than of the accurate," he utters a wilful slander.-Am. Ed.

I allude to this paragraph in the "Gentleman's Magazine," which, of course, has been taken from American authority: "22d February, 1836, died at New-York Joice Heth, aged one hundred and sixty-two. She is stated to have been the nurse of General Washington."-Gent. Mag., 1836. p. 446.a

"Lately died, aged one hundred and twenty, M. Dando, the oldest inhabitant of the department of Gers, which is remarkable for longevity, having finished his loug career without having suffered from infirmity." -Gent. Mag., 1834, p. 129.

"There is residing at Joppa, near Edinburgh, an out-pensioner of Chelsea Hospital, named John Wright. He was born 4th March, 1728, and in a month will be one hundred and seven. He saw Prince Charles

a The case of Joice Heth is now admitted, we believe, to be an imposition. But why should the American people be stigmatized as lacking in veracity because of one man's falsehood? It is but a few years since an imposition almost precisely similar was played off in England; the individual was a Chelsea pensioner named Wallace, if we remember right. The age pretended for him was about one hundred and ten. For his sake the vera city of England might as justly be sneered at-m. Ed.

search around, facts appear, which lead us to the conclusion that no difference of soil, climate, circumstances, or habits prevents the actual occurrence, not merely of extraordinary, but of comfortable longevity in some individuals in every region. Rare they always will be, but occasionally they appear in every part of our globe; though we do not find that any nation marks it with a distinction of public honour but the Chinese, who, though inferior to civilized Europe in most things, yet, at times, display a moral wisdom which deserves our emulation.* One of the greatest tests of this in a country, and of sound moral feeling in an individual, is a personal respect to old age. It operates downward, through all our social links, to our very cradle period, with a beneficial influence that every family will be the better for.

The salubrity of England, either from its climate, its manners, or its intellectual cultivation, to the more advanced periods of social life, is indicated by the fact, that in 1834 it was calculated that there were then seventy peers in the House of Lords who were between seventy and eighty years of age, or a sixth part of the 426 of whom the house, including the bishops, consists. Eleven of these were noticed as either octogenarians, or still older.†

But in ascribing the longevity of England, and therefore of any people, to manners or conduct, I feel myself to be arrested in my opinion by a circumstance that I have just remarked in Plutarch, in his treatise on the opinions of the philosophers of his own and the anterior times; for I learn there that even our ancient Britons, in all their painted nudity and wildness, when fierce manners, and barbaric habits, and all the at Holyrood in 1745, and was beside General Wolfe when he fell on the plains of Quebec. He served in the army thirty-nine years and a half, and was discharged at eighty-one, in January, 1810. He is fresh and vigorous, and retains all his faculties entire. At quarter-day he walks from Joppa to the Excise Office at Edinburgh, a distance of four miles, and returns the same day."-Edin. Weekly Journal, Feb., 1835.

* Mr. Gutzlaff mentions: "In one of the houses we saw stuck up a yellow paper, given by the emperer in token of his great respect towards an aged pair, who had lived one hundred years."-Gutz. Voyage, p. 280. †These eleven peers were thus represented :

Lord Wodehouse

93

Lord St. Helens

80

80

82

evils of uncivilization, or what was nearly such, were the characteristics of their population, yet had the reputation of living to 120 years. He quotes the Greek physician who had remarked this circumstance, and contrasts them with the Ethiopians, who became old at thirty. The Grecian refers the British longevity to their colder climate, and it is certainly not possible to attribute it to any civilized improvements. From the manner in which it is mentioned, it seems not to have been an accidental circumstance, but sufficiently frequent to have drawn the notice of foreign observers at the commencement of our Christian era. *

LETTER XX.

The Natural Division of Population into moieties of Youth and Age in England.-The settled Preponderance and Power of the Elder.Effect of this established Arrangement.—Their respective Operations on each other.

MY DEAR SON,

From the facts and laws we have been recapitulating arise that state and fabric of our social world in which it is the Divine plan that mankind shall generally appear and live. The constitution of society, in our British community, will convey to you a sufficient notion of what it is in the civilized nations of the world, though each country, amid a common similarity in the great outlines, has its own specific variations.

That one half, or nearly so, of our male population are continuously under twenty years of age is an ordination by which the government of human life is permanently placed, and steadily kept in the hands and under the control of the elder moiety. In other countries the same division has the same

"Asclepiades reports that the Ethiopians become soon aged; that is, by the time they are thirty years old; because their bodies are heated and burnt by the sun. But in Britain, men live on to 120 years, because their country is cold, and their natural heat is kept by this in their bodies, while the Ethiopian bodies are more open, from their pores being relaxed by the sun's action. Those in the arctic climes are more dense, and on this account they attain to greater longevity."-Plut., SOL TWY apɛsk, or Plac. Phil., 1. 5, c. 30, p. 343. Ed. Ven., 1509.

t See before, p. 164.

amount.

effect, though with some differences as to the exact year and This established law, which is universal in its general operations, has been made by our Creator the groundwork of his system of human society, apparently for the express purpose that the mature part of his human creatures shall be the rulers of the rest. To secure and perpetuate this effect, it was necessary that his laws of birth and death should be so arranged and conducted that there should always be enough of the elder living from year to year to be in this commanding proportion to the younger. Such a result could only be produced by a careful adjustment of these two elements of our population, with an express view to this effect. Though individual life is always shifting and fleeting, yet this consequence is abidingly sustained.

He has further secured the stability and wisest conduct of society, and, for that purpose, the governing power and influence in it of the mature and experienced portion of it, by also causing, in our island, the males from thirty to sixty, when the human frame is in its most effective state of body and mind, to be more numerous than those from fifteen to thirty ;* so that, if the younger should be induced to rise in insurrection against their elder rulers, and struggle for the dominion, they have not the physical power to accomplish their purpose. The men from thirty to sixty would always have the victory against boys and young men between fifteen and thirty, besides the aid they would receive from the effective part of those who had attained or passed their sixtieth year.t

The elder are also the most steadily laborious and acquiring portion of society, and keep and use what they gain with more prudence and economy than the younger. Hence the property of society is also chiefly with them, especially its landed estates; and from their superior mental ability, and knowledge, and practice of life, almost all the superior offices and stations of authority, rank, business, influence, and important activities of life, are likewise with that portion who have reached and exceeded their thirtieth year. The males

* In our population of 1821, of the 5,152,052 males, 1,265,366 were between fifteen and thirty; and 1,418,195 between thirty and sixty.-Rickm. En. Abst., vol. i., p. xxxvii.

†These were 378,441; a fourth of the number between thirty and sixty would have been 354,298. All those from thirty upward to the end of life were 1,796,636.-Ib,