female who was passing beyond his duration.* Facts like these are the lectures and lessons of Providence to us on this important point. They silently concur to unveil to us the undying nature of that living principle which we know and admire in the human understanding. The impartial thinker can hardly contemplate them without this impression arising within him. They are, at least, the best evidence which our Creator can give us in the phenomena of this life, that the soul is undestroyed by bodily age or decay, and that death only separates its essential vitality from its material frame when it ceases to actuate its nervous organizations.

If dotage or mental decay had been the natural or necessary accompaniment or consequence of extended age, the ancients, in their busy practical republics and national competitions and collisions, would have largely experienced such results. But, instead of finding feebleness or debility the companion of age, they had repeated testimonies of the contrary effect, and have recorded these in their writings which have come down to us. Plutarch was of such a different opinion, that he composed a treatise to show that the aged were not incompetent to manage public affairs, but ought to govern the commonwealth; and that the state or city would always be most prosperous where they commanded, and, when under their direction, the younger exerted their activities. He mentions some instances of their efficiency.†

The treatise of Lucian is curious on this subject for its enumeration of distinguished persons in antiquity who had

"At the house of the Hill parish, Pemningham, near Ayrshire, lives Mrs. McNairn, who, in the hundred and first year of her age, possesses all her faculties entire. She can read her Bible without the use of spectacles. Her hearing is most acute, and her memory tenacious in a high, degree."-New Farmers' Journal, 4th Dec., 1833.

"Near Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire, in January, 1835, died David John, aged one hundred. He could read his bills without glasses to the last."-Gent. Mag., 1835, p. 110.

Thus be mentions, from Polybius of Massanissa, who died at ninety, that he had a son but four years old at his death; and a short time before he died, defeated the Carthaginians in a pitched battle. Phocion was as active in his old age, and when the Athenians, on a sudden levy, ordered all who were not sixty to arm and follow him, which displeased many, he asked them what they had to complain of in the call, when he who was to be their leader went out to the campaign at the age of eighty. He notices also Simonides, who, at the same age, won the public prize for composing songs and setting them to music, and Paulus, an actor, who at seventy acted in eight tragedies within four days.

lived from eighty to one hundred. As it may both amuse and instruct you to be made acquainted with them, I will class them under a few heads.

The first may be the celebrated kings and generals, of whom he notices several.*

The second shall be Greek philosophers, who were at the head of their different schools, and were famous in their day.t

The next will comprise historians, poets, and other writers. These last two series show that the most intellectual men of Greece were remarkably long lived, and lead us to infer that there is naturally, and, where disease does not prevent it, a more natural connexion between active mind and longevity than is generally supposed.

But as all these were under a hundred years, my next letter shall take a view of those above a hundred in the last two centuries, whose ages and condition Mr. Easton collected from the notice of them in the periodical obituaries that have been

* As-Numa, eighty; Servius Tullins, eighty; Tarquin the Proud died in his exile at Cuma at ninety; Hiero, of Sicily, ninety-two; Agathocles, ninety-five; the Scythian Ateas, at ninety, fell in battle against Philip; Teres, king of the Odrysseans, in Thrace, at ninety; Antigonus died of wounds in battle at eighty-one; another Antigonus at eighty; Lysimachus fell in his eighty-fifth year; Antipater died at eighty; Ptolemy Lagus, in Egypt, at eighty-one; the regal founder of Pergamus, eighty; Mithridates, warring against Rome to his last hour, at eightyfour; Attalus, eighty-two; the Cappadocian king Arcarthas fell in battle at eighty-two; Artaxerxes Mnemon of Persia, eighty-six; or, as Dio said, ninety-four; Artaxerxes Ochus, ninety-two; Parthian kings, at eighty-seven and ninety-six; Artabazus made king at eighty-six ; Tereus, ninety-two; and a king of the Bosphorus, vigorous in body at ninety.Lucian, Macrob.

The philosophers whom Lucian notices are-Zeno, ninety-eight; Cleanthes, ninety-nine; Xenophanes, ninety one; Zenocrates, eightyfour; Carneades, eighty-five; Chrysippus, eighty-one; Plato, eightyone; Critolaus, eighty-two; Diogenes the Stoic, eighty-eight; Posido nius, eighty-four; Athenodorus, eighty-two; Nestor, tutor to Tiberius, ninety-two.

Xenophon, above ninety; Pherecydes, eighty-five; Hellanicus, eighty-five; Timæus, ninety-six; Aristobulus, ninety-he began to write at eighty-five; Polybius died from a fall; Hypsicrates, ninetytwo; Anacreon, eighty-five; Stesichorus, eighty-five; Isocrates wrote his celebrated panegyric at ninety-six, and killed himself on hearing of the defeat of his Athenian countrymen at Cheronea at one hundred ; Eratosthenes, eighty-two; Apollodorus, eighty-two; Sophocles was choked at ninety-five, and a few years before had composed his Edipus Coloneus; Cratinus, the comic poet, ninety-seven-he wrote a popular comedy a little before his death; Philemon, a comic writer, ninety-seven; Epicharmis, a comic writer, ninety-seven.-Lucian, Macrob.

published, and who are marked as being efficient in their powers or faculties at this protracted age. All such instances concur to show that the intellectual principle within us is a living and active reality, of a different nature from its declining body.*

LETTER XXV.

Further Instances, showing that Longevity has been and must be a pleasurable and efficient State.-Facts as to the Diet which LongLivers have used.-Cornaro's Experience.-Observations on our own Power of obtaining it.

MY DEAR SON,

The preceding instances of longevity prove that both the mind and body have been efficient in human nature to its longest age in our terrestrial life; but as the effect, or at least the impression, of such evidence depends upon its amount, it seems to me to be useful to adduce further examples, in order, by their number, to establish the conviction that they are not the casual things which we regard as unaccountable accidents, which are not in the course of things, nor arise from settled causes; but that they are the steady and intended operations of the laws of nature which accompany our being on this earth. For the true opinion seems to me to be, that as duration without end, until spe

In

* On the separate and distinct nature of the mind, Lord Brougham has made some very intelligent and forcible reasoning, in his discourse on natural theology. I fully coincide with him in the following remarks:-"The evidence for the existence of mind is to the full as complete as that upon which we believe in the existence of matter. deed, it is more certain and more irrefragable. The consciousness of existence, the perpetual sense that we are thinking, and that we are performing the operation quite independently of all material objects, proves to us the existence of a being different from our bodies, with a degree of evidence higher than we can have for the existence of those bodies themselves, or any other part of the material world."

I think this application of the mental and moral phenomena as proof of the existence of the Deity an important addition to our natural theology. The best interests of society induce us to welcome all such contributions on these noble subjects from intelligent men who have taken any lead in worldly affairs.

cially annihilated, is the essential property of the living soul within us, so longevity is the natural property of the body it is invested with here; and earlier death is the product of diseasing and deranging causes, extrinsic to its material constitution, and therefore subject to the modifying and healing power of human skill and knowledge, under the permission of the all-governing Creator and Preserver. Unless we believe this truth, we shall take no pains to acquire the benefit; but in proportion as we accustom ourselves to think that the lengthening of our life is greatly within our own power, and may be also made and will become a desirable enjoyment as long as it can be continued, we shall so much more value our present life, and be solicitous to find out and practise what will most prolong it. But to do this will be increasing the stream and sum of human happiness both to ourselves and others; for no one can be happier without others benefiting from it; and no one can secure and increase either his own felicity or his longevity in his present life, but by the practice of those moral means and virtues which are always wise and advantageous, and which, like light and heat, cannot exist without diffusing themselves around, pervading and benefiting whatever they come in contact with.

Extreme longevity is of itself a very curious subject, if it were regarded only as a theme of our intellectual contemplation and inquiry, as to the causes from which it originates in the favoured individual. It is a pity that intelligent men in their neighbourhood have not made such persons, and their preceding life and habits, more the object of their investigating attention; for then science might have had some elucidating facts on which it could have soundly reasoned. The subject is also of great moment to us, from its connexion with many questions as to the nature and qualities of our living and thinking principle, and as to the relations with its corporeal functions and organizations, and essential independence of them, even while it is affected by them. On all these accounts I will devote another letter to the consideration of other examples of great longevity, which various obituaries have enabled others to collect, and will arrange them under such heads as will most satisfactorily illustrate the inference to which they will lead us. You will then have all the laws and principles of the plan and economy which have been settled and carried into execution by our Creator as to our earthly

life as extensively before you as I am able to place them; but while I desire to make them sufficiently copious, it shall be my study to be as brief as possible.*

The well-known Cornaro lived to one hundred, and describes with animation his own efficiency when he wrote five years before. It is a pleasure to read his expressions of his happy feelings, even in the phrases of his self-satisfaction.† Such instances and such effusions show us that human existence is a happy state of being, and that its prolongation is not that misery which so many writers represent it to be. It has been gloomily described by some with mournful and disfiguring declamation, in order to create that dislike of it which would urge us, as a relief, to think more of our succeeding

We may begin by mentioning those of one hundred and above whose deaths are in the obituary of a single month in the Gentlemen's Magazine for January, 1837.

"Near Letterkenny, in Donegal, Eleanor, relict of Mr. Charles Gallagher, at the extraordinary age of one hundred and nine years. Only fifty years ago she gave birth at once to three children, two of whom are living.

"Nov. 11, at Old Derby, near Haverfordwest, aged one hundred and three, Elizabeth Page. She retained her faculties to the last.

"Nov. 10, at Hatfield Woodhouse, in her hundredth year, Mrs. Betty Smith, retaining all her faculties nearly to the last.

"Oxon, Dec. 4. At Thame, in her ninety-eighth year, Mrs. Anne Hooper, spinster. On that day month preceding her sister, Mrs. Mary Hooper, in her hundredth year.

"These ancient ladies could read and sew without the aid of spectacles, and possessed all their faculties to the last; and would amuse their visiters with a narration of the miserable incidents of the great fire at Haddenham ninety years ago. A few months since, Mrs. Fidd, a sister, died in London, aged ninety-two; and about twelve years ago, Mr. L. Hooper, their brother, died at Thame, aged eighty-six.

"At Michaelstow, Mary Conch, at one hundred and two.

"At Woodhall, in Cumberland, Rachael Wilkinson, aged one hundred and four. Bereft of parents when young, she supported herself by frugality and industry, and never applied for parochial relief."

The same month contains notices of four other individuals between ninety and one hundred; and eighteen others between eighty and ninety.

"I am now ninety-five years of age, and find myself as healthful, brisk, and airy as if I were but twenty-five years old. I relish all I eat, sleep quietly, and none of my senses fail me. I have still a lively fancy, a happy memory, a sound judgment, a strong heart. My voice is more tunable than ever, so that I can chant forth my office every morning more easily than I could in my youth."-Cornaro on Long Life, p. 101, 108. Cardan, who knew him at eighty, mentions that he could either ride or walk on foot very well, and composed a comedy which came off with applause. De Thou says that he died at Padua, calmly and without any pain, above a hundred years old,