grinders cease because they are few, and those Regrets ought to disappear in like manner; that look out of the windows shall be darkened, they are only the last flashes of that foolish and the doors shall be shut in the streets... vanity which never grows old. and all the daughters of music shall be brought "Let us not forget another advantage, or at low . . . and fears shall be in the way, and the least a powerful compensation, which contributes almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper to the happiness of old age. This is, that the shall be a burden, and desire shall fail." moral gains more than the physical loses. In The frailties of extreme old age are truly fact, the moral gains everything; and if somepictured in the figurative language of Solomon. thing is lost by the physical, the compensation Physical strength declines as old age advances; is complete. Some one asked the philosopher this fact is unquestionable. But for this decline Fontenelle, when ninety-five years of age, of strength, does old age bring with it no com- which twenty years of his life he regretted the pensation? "The physical loses," says Cornaro, most? I regret little,' he replied; and yet that is certain." "The moral gains," says the happiest years of my life were those between Cicero. "More than the physical loses," says the fifty-fifth and the seventy-fifth.' He made Buffon "A noble compensation," says Flour- this confession in good faith, and his experience "It makes one wish to become old," says arose out of these sensible and consoling Montaigne. "And then how advantageous to truths. At fifty-five years a man's fortune is eslive long," adds Cornaro; "for if one is a cardi- tablished, his reputation made, consideration is nal, he may become pope as he grows older; if obtained, the state of life fixed, pretensions he occupy a distinguished place in a republic, he given up or satisfied, projects overthrown or esmay become its chief; if he be a learned man, tablished, the passions for the most part calmed or excel in any art, he may excel in it still or cooled, the career nearly completed, as regards the labors which every man owes to sociWe might quote the praises which Cornaro ety; there are fewer enemies, or rather fewer lavishes on old age. But seeing him bear so envious persons who are capable of injuring us, joyously his many years, we almost identify him because the counterpoise of merit is acknowlat ninety-five with old age in person, and feel as edged by the public voice." if he were only sounding the praises of the ancient Cornaro himself. ens. more." 66 "The spirit increases in perfection," says Cornaro, as the body grows older." It becomes Cicero, on the other hand, wrote of old age fitted for new duties and exercises of mind; for when he was still too young. His praises read the development of the human faculties is not sweetly, and contain much truth; but it is the simultaneous, it is successive. Those which composition we admire, as much as the senti- rule at one period, become subordinate at anment it embodies. We reflect that Cicero, in other. "In youth," says Flourens, "the attentalking of old age, was still far from the period tion is quick, lively, always on the alert, fixes when he might speak of it from experience. itself on everything, but reflection is wanting. He was only composing a theme which he had In manhood, attention and reflection are united, set himself as a task. and this constitutes the strength of manhood. But at seventy years of age, Buffon, who re- In old age, attention lessens, but reflection ingarded himself as still young, wrote-not of creases; it is the period in which the human set purpose, but incidentally, and among his heart bends back on itself, and knows itself other writings-concerning old age. We listen best." as to the true and genuine homage of one who "The old man," says M. Reveille Parise, stands on the confines of both periods, and feels" smiles sometimes, he very rarely laughs. himself entitled to speak freely of each-when, Goodness, that grace of old age, is often found in contrasting his own state with that of young- under a grave and severe exterior, for the first er men around him, he says,-"Every day that comes from the heart, and the second from the I rise in good health, have I not the enjoyment physical being, which has become weak. Paof this day as immediately and fully as you tience is the privilege of old age. A great adhave? If I conform my movements, my appe- vantage of a man who has lived long is, that he tites, my desires, to the impulses of a wise nature knows how to wait. In the old man, everyalone, am I not as wise and more happy than thing is submitted to reflection." you? And the view of the past, which awakens Thus old age has its pleasures, it appears, the regrets of old fools, offers to me, on the and its compensations. It is by no means the contrary, the enjoyments of memory, agreeable unenjoyable period we are apt to fancy it. For pictures, precious images, which are worth more its calm and reasonable pleasures, wise men than your objects of pleasure; for they are praise it above the other periods of life. It is pleasant, these images, they are pure, they call surely worth living for, therefore. It is even up only amiable recollections. The inquietudes, worth sacrificing the pleasures of youthful exthe chagrins, all the troop of sadnesses which cess, if by so doing we can hope to reach and accompany your youthful enjoyments, disappear live through it. But if it begin only at seventyin the picture which represents them to me. the natural termination of manhood, according to M. Flourens-how few ever do reach it!| The subject, as we have sketched it, seemsand of these, again, how few have left them- indeed, really is complete in itself. And yet selves in a condition to taste its peculiar enjoy- speculative questions rise up in connection with ments and compensations! it, some of which awaken doubts as to the main THIRD. But if old age be an enjoyable pe- conclusion at which we have arrived, Grant riod of life-if it be really worth living to, and that human life may naturally extend to a hunliving for, it is worth caring for, when reached. dred years, or even to a century and a half, then It is to be reached, as we have seen, by living a we naturally say to ourselves,-Were men resober life; it is to be reached in good health, by ally to live so long as this, and other animals in a reasonable obedience to the rules of Lessius. proportion, how thickly peopled the world would But when this green and worthy old age is at- become! If births greatly exceed deaths now tained, how is it to be nursed and specially up- among civilized nations, living at a state of peace, how would it be were men to live usually With a view to this special end, M. Reveille to a hundred years, with health and vigor in Parise has laid down four simple rules. proportion! This reflection did not escape the The FIRST is to know how to be old. There great Buffon-great in genius and in capacity is very much in this rule. "Few people know for speculation, but limited, like the time in how to be old," was one of the sayings of which he lived, and often erroneous, in his Rochefoucauld; and the philosophy of this knowledge of facts. He met the objection it knowledge is expressed by Voltaire in the embodies, with a new and brilliant hypothesis. couplet : held ? "Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son age- "The total quantity of life on the Globe," he says, "is always the same. Death, which seems to destroy all, destroys nothing of that primiThe SECOND rule is to know oneself well. tive life which is common to all the species of Both of these precepts are more philosophical organized beings. God, in creating than medical, and yet both lie at the basis of a the first individuals of each species of animal successful medical management, at the period and vegetable, not only gave form to the dust when age and ill health are so likely to of the earth, but rendered it living and animaconjoin. ted by including in each individual a greater or The THIRD rule is to make a suitable adjust- smaller number of active principles, of living ment of the daily life. Good physical habits organic molecules, indestructible in their nature, produce health, as good moral habits produce and common to all organized beings. These happiness. Old men who do every day the molecules pass from body to body, and serve to same thing, with the same moderation and the maintain and continue the life, or to nourish. same relish, live forever! "One can scarcely and enlarge the body of every individual alike; believe," says Reveille Parise, “how far a little and after the dissolution of the body, after its health, well treated, will carry us." And "the destruction, even its reduction to ashes, these rule of the sage," says Cicero, "is to make use organic molecules, upon which death has no of what one has, and to act in everything ac- power, still survive, pass into other beings, and cording to one's strength." bring to them nourishment and life. Every And the FOURTH rule is, to attack every mal-production, every renewal, every increase by ady at its beginning. In youth, there is a generation, by nutrition, by development, supreserve of force a dormant life, as it were, poses then a preceding destruction, a conversion behind the visible acting life. The first life be- of substance, a transport of these organic moleing in danger, this second life comes to its aid-cules which never mulliply, but which, always and thus youth rallies after much neglect or ill existing in equal number, keep nature always usage, and still lives on. But old age has no equally alive, the earth equally peopled, and alsuch reserve life. Every ailment of age, there- ways equally resplendent with the first glory of fore, must be taken up quick and cut short, if Him who created it.” the single, unsupported, easily enfeebled life is to be surely upheld. Who, after reading this passage, will deny to Buffon the praise both of genius and eloquence? By following these fundamental rules, and No wonder he has charmed and captivated so the practical precepts as to diet, exercise, tem- many generations of admiring readers, and perature, etc., which M. Reveille Parise deduces persuaded them to receive his poetical imaginfrom them, can we prolong life? No; we can- ings as the dogmas of true science. not, by any art, prolong life, in the sense of The entire doctrine of Buffon, that the quanmaking it pass the limit prescribed by the con- tity of life on the globe is fixed, is a pure specstitution of man. But we shall be able to live ulation. His organic molecules are a second an entire and complete life-extending our still more etherial imagination, devised to exdays as far as the laws of our individual consti- plain the possibility of the first. Except as a tution, combined with the more general laws curious hypothetical notion, wherewithal to which regulate the constitution of the species, while away an idle hour, we would dismiss the will admit of. first not only from our books, but from our thoughts. It can scarcely, in any way, be con- extinct. Immediately before the historic period nected with the positive knowledge of our the mammoth and the mastodon disappeared, time. The second speculation is only to be leaving the elephant as the sole existing gigannumbered with the vain fancies, antiquated tic quadruped. Before these, again, the megathough fine, which abound so much in the purely therium, the dinotherium, and how many poetical physical philosophy of past centuries. others! And yet there is a charm in this poetical phi- "To take a special example. Not less than osophy which makes us regret, while we dis- forty species of pachyderms are known to have miss it. We cannot help admiring the specu- lived on the soil of France, and of these the lators of the olden time, as men of finely-gifted only one that now remains, is the wild boar; minds. And we envy them those happy hours and of nearly a hundred species of ruminating of creative inspiration, when, by their midnight animals, only the ox, the stag, and the roebuck. lamps, or beneath the shade of academic groves, Finally, M. Agassiz reckons not less than they built up poetical worlds, and by imagina- twenty-five thousand species of fossil fishes all tive methods constructed and regulated all lost, while we know only five or six thousand their wheels. living fishes-and of extinct shells forty thousand It is no doubt owing to feelings of this kind are reckoned in a fossil state." that the great views of Buffon, the substance of These facts are admitted, but the conclusion his eloquence, possess still the power to charm which M. Flourens hastily draws from them, and influence M. Flourens. "I reject," he is not admissible. says, "the organic molecules of Buffon, as I do Since life first appeared upon the earth, he the Monads of Leibnitz. They are only philo- says, species have always gone on diminishing. sophic expedients for removing difficulties But of this assertion, the facts he has advanced, which they do not remove. I study life in are no proof whatever. It is an undisputed neither of these, but in living beings them- fact in paleontology, that species, and even selves; and from this study I learn two things genera, have from time to time disappeared from -first, that the number of species has been the surface of the globe. But it is equally uncontinually diminishing ever since animals have disputed that new species and genera have from existed upon the globe; and, second, that the time to time made their appearance-man himnumber of individuals in certain species has self so far as we know, being among the last. been, on the contrary, continually increasing. New forms constantly succeeded the old. And The result of these contrary actions is, that, who shall say that at any one of those epochs taking every thing into account, the total quan- in which life most abounded, the number of spetity of life-by which I understand the total cies or genera was really less than in another? number of living beings-remains in effect, as Who can even, with a show of reason, sayBuffon has said, very nearly the same." taking all species of living things togetherTamed down into plain English, the eloquent that there are fewer genera or species on the imaginings of Buffon, as interpreted and under-earth at this moment-in air, land, and waterstood by M. Flourens, amount simply to this, than at any former geologic era he could name? that the number of individual living beings All that can be safely said is, that man, as the existing at one time on the face of the earth has dominant species, is gradually subduing and exalways been very nearly the same. Out of a tirpating some hundreds of other species in the purely speculative assertion like this, what good present era, and that the individuals of his own can be extracted? Does it really throw any species, and of a few useful domestic animals, light upon paleontological history, or derive are at the same time increasing somewhat in any confirmation from such chapters of this his- number. tory as have yet been written? Does it enable us, in any degree, to understand better the Divine plan and procedure in the past, as it is recorded in the rocky strata-or in the present, as seen in the supposed progressive increase of the human race? But in this latter increase is there anything more than an imaginary compensation for the other forms of life that are lessened or extirpated? Is there in it any evidence of a system of compensation having been in existence in more ancient geological epochs? There is Nevertheless. M. Flourens, in the book before nothing of the sort. The imaginary law of us, sets formally to work to prove his two pro- Buffon is rendered in no degree more probable positions. by the conjectural modifications of M. Flour"That species are always lessening in num- ens. All we can admit at present is, that the ber," he says, "is evident from the fact that quantity of life upon the globe at any one time. several species are known to have become ex- and the forms in which this life manifests itself, tinct in comparatively recent times. The dodo are dependent upon the will of the Deity. To has become extinct since the Portuguese first what general laws He has subjected this total visited the Isle of France in 1545. The primi- quantity and these forms, we cannot even guess. tive types of nearly all our domestic animalsthe ox, the horse, the camel, the dog-are all Do these speculations as to the quantity of life upon the globe, interfere in any way with comfort. As to what would happen on the our reasonings and conclusions as to the natural face of the globe, were all men so to live that and possible length of human life? Not in the none should fail to reach this great age-as to least. As an abstract result of physiological how the people would multiply, and what inquiry, it has been rendered probable that would become of them,-these are questions from ninety to a hundred years is the natural which do not concern us as individuals anxious length of an ordinary human life. As a special to live long—which, were we all to begin inand individual positive result, affecting each of continently so to live, could scarcely cause us to whom this information is given, it has anxiety for generations to come, and which we been rendered further probable that, by leading may confidently leave to be answered by the a moderate and sober life, any of us may attain ALL-DISPOSER. this length of life in comparative health and From the New York Observer. I stand upon the river's verge, Its waves break at my feet; 'Tis not alone the billows' roar That falls upon my ear; For angel harps are turned to cheer And angel tongues are chanting there Though dim and faltering grows my sight Beyond the darkening wave; The gales that toss its crest of foam The everlasting hills arise, Loved faces look upon me now, And well-known voices speak! I thought my heart would break! Earth, home and time, farewell! The snowy, blood-washed robe I'll wear-- Welcome, the waves that waft me there THE WIND. The wind went forth o'er land and sea, Foaming waves leapt up to meet it, And the forest's murmured sigh Of the wind that swept o'er land and sea. Cast the bark upon the shore, And the cry of pain and death Through the wind that roar'd upon the sea. The wind was whispering on the lea Tenderly; But the white rose felt it pass, All her trembling petals shed, So gently by, the wind upon the lea. Blow, thou wind, upon the sea And a gentler message send, For thy bidding still is one, Be it done In tenderness or wrath, on land or sea! Household Words. MORALITIES. Marriage is the nursery of Sleep is the fallow of the mind. Flattery is a sort of bad money, to which our vanity gives currency-Rochefoucault. Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defence of manners.- Chesterfield. We seldom find people ungrateful so long as we are in a condition to serve them.-Rochefoucault. Covetousness, like a candle ill-made, smothers the splendor of a happy fortune in its own grease.-F. From The Edinburg Review. to adorn and enjoy it, and light and heat are ART. VII.-The Chemistry of Common Life. awakened or extinguished at will. The inacBy JAMES F. W. JOHNSTON, M. D., F. R. tive nitrogen dilutes the too energetic oxygen, S. L. & E., Reader in Chemistry and Min- so as to make animal life longer, and to suberalogy in the University of Durham. 2 ject living fire to human control; while the vols. post 8vo. Blackwood: 1855. poisonous carbonic acid is rendered harmless to animal life by the very small proportion in which it is mixed with the other airs. THE common life of man is full of wonders, chemical and physiological. The manner and One of the most admirable, indeed, of Nameans of our existence, every necessary we ture's wonders in the material world, is the consume, every material comfort we enjoy,-purpose served by this carbonic acid gas. Itall the parts and functions of the bodily organs self poisonous in a high degree, it can be through which we enjoy them, everything, in breathed by man with impunity only in very short, which concerns our daily individual life, minute quantity; that is, in an extreme state -abounds in admirable marvels, which chem- of dilution. Hence, the atmosphere in which istry and chemical physiology disclose. Dr. man lives contains only one gallon of this gas Johnston has described and discussed these in every 2,500. And so small is this quantity, subjects, at once so familiar and so obscure,- that the weight of carbon in this form which so universally felt and so imperfectly under- the whole atmosphere contains, amounts only stood,-in one of the most agreeable and in- to thirty-three grains out of the fifteen pounds structive publications of the present day. We of air which press upon every square inch. shall follow him rapidly through the general Yet by this comparatively minute quantity all divisions of his subjects, and terminate our ob- vegetable life is nourished and sustained. servations by some of the examples which the Look out in the coming spring-time at the Doctor draws from the habits and wants of bursting bud. Watch how beneath the midour daily lives. day sun, the tiny leaflet spreads out its yellow If we begin, for example, with that univer- surface to the favoring rays. See how from sal air which floats around us,-which expands day to day its hue becomes greener, and its our lungs and permeates every tissue of our several parts increase in size. This growth bodies-modern chemistry informs us that, will continue till closing summer finds the though considered simple and elementary by little bud changed into a magnificent plant, the ancients, this air is a mixture of at least clad with copious leaves, and successively three elastic fluids, equally subtle and invisible, blooming with gay flowers, or borne down by and equally essential to the purposes which the a burden of tempting fruit. Autumn will atmosphere is intended to serve. These are succeed, to stop the growth and give a new the now well-known gases nitrogen, oxygen, color to its leaves; and chill winter will strip and carbonic acid. In the first, flame dies and it of all its leafy pride, and leave it naked as no life can persist; in the second, bodies burn when spring-time began. and animals live with great intensity; in the Such is the yearly plant-life, as seen by the third, both life and flame are extinguished. ordinary cultivator, or watched with daily care Though so different in their properties when by the lover of vegetable nature. But, betaken singly, the admixture of them, which neath this outer open life, there is an inner seforms our atmosphere, is adjusted-in kind cret life which the common eye does not see. and in the relative proportions of each-to the A constant invisible intercourse has all the condition of things both living and dead, which time been taking place between the external now obtains on the surface of the earth. air and the most hidden parts of the internal Did the air consist of nitrogen only, the plant. No sooner does the little leaf burst sun's rays would be the sole source of heat the swelling bud, than a thousand unseen wherever the atmosphere extended, and no mouths open on its surface to suck in the airy existing plant or animal could flourish on the food which now for the first time comes within globe. Were it formed of oxygen only, fire, their reach. These minute mouths (stomata) once kindled, would refuse to be extinguished, are scattered in millions over the leaf, now on and conflagration would spread, till everything its upper, now on its under side, and now on combustible in the earth was consumed. Did both-according to the circumstances in which it consist of carbonic acid only, death and com- the plant is destined to live. Beginning with parative stillness would reign everywhere, and the first dawn of sunlight, they perpetually the production of light and heat such as we suck in carbonic acid from the atmosphere, and can now command, would be utterly impossi-give off oxygen gas in nearly equal volume, But the happy mixture of the three till the sun goes down. Then, with a view to gases which now prevails, renders everything other chemical ends, and, obedient to the repossible. Under their united influence the tiring sun, they change the nature of their rocks crumble to form a fertile soil, plants work. While darkness lasts, they take back flourish to cover it with verdure, animals live carbonic acid from the air, and give out again ble. |