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killed at the Battle of the Boyne, hale and vigorous, though 83, who used to say that "when he was young he conversed with old men to gain experience, and when old delighted in the company of the young to keep up his spirits."

Hippocrates, the leading physician of his day, long ago-died at 109, tradition says -advised pure air, cleanliness, moderation in all things, exercise, and a daily friction of the clay. It does not appear that modern doctors are able to improve on his prescription, and they generally content themselves with following the divine old man of Cos. Cases are found, however, which show long life to be quite compatible with the absence of these conditions. There was the Rev. W. Davis, an English clergyman, who lived to the age of 105; for the last 35 years of his life he took no out-door exercise; daily had his hot buttered rolls for breakfast, and roast beef for supper, with abundance of wine to wash it down. In the year 1806, there died in London a noted character of her day, Mrs. Lewson, aged 106; she never washed herself, very seldom as much as swept her rooms; her labours at the toilet were confined to smearing her face and neck with hog's lard, with an occasional touch of rouge. We can quite believe the report that her chief companions were cats and dogs.

While these cases and many others show that old age is possible in defiance of all commonly-received rules of hygiene, so also the evidences are clear that neither climate, occupation nor condition of life can be specially depended upon; more particularly in regard to extreme longevity. According to Finlaison's Tables, "Rural districts have the advantage of about one in two hundred deaths above city districts, and one in five hundred above the town districts." Country, therefore, is not so much better than city; and hot climates differ but little from cold.

The female sex seems to have somewhat the advantage of the male in the

average duration of life; though there are more instances of extreme longevity among the latter than the former. It is said, but we really are not sure about it, that matrimony is conducive to long life. Hufeland gives a solemn warning to bachelors. He says: "There is not one instance of a bachelor having attained a great age." Now, while it may be that, by a wise dispensation of Providence, these comparatively useless members of the social world die off sooner than their brethren who have conjugated, yet the assertion of the Prussian authority is altogether too sweeping. Kant lived to 80, Swedenborg to 84, Alexander von Humboldt to 90, Hobbes to 91; besides many other single gentlemen who reached a most venerable age. But Hufeland was evidently prejudiced in favour of matrimony; for he says further: "All people who have been very old were married more than once;" and he instances the case of one De Longueville, who attained the of 110, and had ten wives, the last in his 99th year! Poor man! to be thus untimely cut off in the midst of a career of usefulness! But perhaps if he had not been so matrimonially inclined he might have lived much longer.

age

Even though we take into consideration the occupation and surrounding circumstances of the individual, we do not arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to what is most conducive to longevity. Among clergymen, we find cases like those of Cardinal de Solis, who live to be 110; Dr. Totty, an English rector, of Hastings, 101; Bishop Morton of Litchfield, 95. Lawyers have gene rally been long-lived, as witness Lords Lyndhurst, Brougham, Mansfield, Stowell and Eldon, all of whom died in the neighbour. hood of 90. Physicians shew few examples of longevity; more are to be found among literary men, like Samuel Rogers, living to 93, and Fontenelle who completed his century. In the arts, we read of Michael Angelo, who wore the four crowns of archi

tecture, sculpture, painting and poetry to the age of 90; Sir Christopher Wren finding rest after a life of 91 years; Titian dying of the plague at 99. Kings and princes who have lived active lives, provide us with few cases of extreme age. So, too, with soldiers, though one case comes up before us-one who was both soldier and king-blind old Dandolo, chosen Doge of Venice at 84, storming Constantinople at the head of his troops when 94, refusing to accept the offered throne of the Eastern Empire, to which he was elected, at 96, and dying Doge

at 97.

If, then, extreme old age be possible under so many and so varying conditions, we may well ask the question, upon what does longevity depend? "Chiefly," replies Sir John Sinclair (Code of Health and Longevity), "upon a certain bodily and mental predisposition to longevity." An indefinite answer, amounting in effect to little more than this, that certain people live long because they do not die sooner. And yet it may be as good as we can give. For as some people are born with a predisposition to grow tall, while others for no better reason remain short, so this unexplainable "predisposition" may increase or diminish by many years the length of a man's life.

Another element of longevity is also to a great extent beyond the control of the individual; and that is a complacent, self-satisfied disposition, an even temper, not easily ruffled by the excitement of life, a calm indifference to adverse circumstances; in other words, that peculiar temperament possessed by some people which leads them to "take things easy." A marked example of this is found in the history of Lodowick Cornaro, a Venetian gentleman, whose "Treatise on Temperance" was translated into English as far back as 1678. Signor Cornaro had no public cares, for his family had a taint of treason which shut them out from public life; he had no domestic cares; he possessed an ample competence which

preserved him from all personal cares; he had an abundant supply of self-conceit, which his friends doubtless pampered till he began to look on himself as "monarch of all he surveyed;" he had nothing to do, and he did nothing, except to exercise on himself his favourite hygienic hobby-the only marked feature of his life. From the age of thirty-six till his death, at over one hundred, he kept steadily to a diet of twelve ounces of solid food and fourteen of liquid daily. But what had more effect in prolonging his life than his regular diet was the complete control under which he had brought his emotions, so that, to use his own confession, "the death of relatives and friends could make no impression on him but for a moment or two, and then it was over."

Judging from Cornaro's case, as well as from others, we may safely conclude that while temperate and regular habits are conducive to long life, the most important elements of all are easy circumstances, a philosophic self-complacency, and that very moderate exercise of bodily and mental powers which is oftener found connected with mediocrity than with genius of a higher order. All experience teaches that there is a close relationship between the intensity and extensity of life. By intensity we mean the rate of living; by extensity, its duration. The faster we live the sooner we die. All over-work, whether mental or physical, whether valuable labour or reckless dissipation, is a draft on the future; and the draft will have to be paid with heavy interest. In this very rapid age the mass of mankind is over-worked, rather than under-worked. And instead of trying to ease the strain on the the machinery, most of us are doing our utmost to crowd on more steam. Theoretically we may acknowledge the risk we run but it makes little difference in our practices. Life is short, we say, let us work while we

can.

And, after all the grave lectures of health

452

reformers, there is some sense in this idea.
In itself old age is not a desirable thing.
There are accessory circumstances which
may render it enviable; but these do not
always exist. The tendency is to esteem
and honour those over whose heads many
years have passed, because we suppose that
with the passing of years wisdom has come.
"Intellect is the essence of age," says Emer-
son. The superficial observer sees the
locks and wrinkled brow, and takes
snowy
these as the evidences of that ripened intel-
lect which he is prepared to venerate. But
the age of the wise man is to be computed
from his studies, not from his wrinkles. The
intensity of a life of two-score years may
have had richer results than the even tenor
of four-score. This is the idea of the old
Veda: "He that can discriminate is the
father of his father." And is not the man
who has worked with every nerve and mus-
cle till fifty, of as much value to society as he
who has dawdled out a century? Has he
not done more? Does he not know more?
And can he not then step aside from a busy
life to a deserved rest, leaving his memory
enshrined in the affection and esteem of the
circle where he moved-leaving a name
more honourable far than he whose chief
notoriety is from his many years-years
which we begin to count, as some one has
said, when there is nothing else to count?

The legend of Tithonus does not exaggerate the evils of a physical immortality; and when statistics assure us positively that more than half the people over eighty years are totally infirm in mind and body, we scarcely feel tempted to desire a longevity that shall take us into the regions of disability. When the prophets of hygiene point us to our blunders, and lay down rules for our guidance like those of Cornaro, or per

haps more cast-iron still, we are apt to say
with the old satirist, "Longa dies igitur quid
contulit?" What pleasure even in antici-
pating a comparatively vigorous senility, if
we outlive our generation and outlive
our usefulness? The grand-children be-
come the men and women who govern the
world; and they seldom work harmoniously
with the grand-fathers. "Old age for coun-
sel!" But the busy workers have little
time to consult old age, and little inclina-
tion to follow its advice when adverse.
Will the mere fact of having lived many
years console Old Age for his physical in-
conveniences, for his failing powers, for the
neglect of his juniors, for the loss of all his
friends and companions? Where will the
happiness be for the lonely centenarian―

"When the mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has pressed,

In their bloom;

And the names he loved to hear,
Have been carved for many a year

On the tomb ?"

As he looks on life's busy whirl, so change-
less in its activity, its energy, and its vigour,
yet ever changing in its forms and modes,
so different from what it was when he was
young, will he not cry with him of old :
"Yet hold me not forever in thine East;
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.

Release me, and restore me to the ground." Better far to work while there is strength to work and when strength fails to cease from labour, and enter into rest there,

"Where beyond these voices there is peace.”

GREAT BRITAIN, CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES.

WH

EDITORIAL.

When our last between Great Britain Vienna, while other powers ter

Vienna, while other powers demanded territory, demanded nothing but treaties for the suppression of the slave trade; and who for nearly half a century had maintained a constant crusade against the trade, in which she had met with discouragement and even with obstruction from the Government of the United States.

HEN number went to press own colonies; who, at the Congress of the question between Great Britain and the United States was still in a somewhat undeveloped condition. We now propose, as the most useful contribution which it is in our power to make to the discussion, to re-state a few facts which have been buried under ever-increasing piles of fiction, and the knowledge of which is necessary to enable us to do justice to the mother country, and in some measure also to Canada, whose Southern sympathies real or supposed, were included among the causes of offence. In the dispute which has arisen about the Treaty between the two parties at Ottawa, we have no inclination to take part. An occasion for reviewing their respective policy may present itself hereafter.

Slavery had divided the Union politically and socially into two distinct and antagonistic communities. All the world expected that between these two communities a rupture would some day come. It came at last, when, by the triumph of the Republican party in the Presidential Election of 1860, the Southerners lost their political control over the Union, and with it security for the maintenance of their own institutions. The Union then split into two groups of States, and the Southern group formed itself into a new confederation, having African slavery as its distinctive basis.

For this event no one was responsible but the people of the United States themselves, who had recognized slavery in their constitution, and who continued to recognize it till a military necessity enforced its abolition. Least of all could any blame be said to rest on Great Britain, who had abolished by a great national sacrifice slavery in her

Secession was facilitated, and the conduct of its authors was more or less justified in the eyes of many Americans and in those of the world at large by the idea prevalent at the South, and extensively entertained even at the North, as to the individual sovereignty of the States, an idea somewhat loosely expressed by the phrase State Right. Many even of those who did not admit the doctrine of State Right, regarded the Union as a voluntary association, in which the States could never be held by force. Dr. Channing, in enforcing the necessity of political virtue as a bond of cohesion, had said “ our Union is not like that of other nations, confirmed by the habits of ages and riveted by force. It is a recent and still more a voluntary union. It is idle to talk of force as binding us together. Nothing can retain a member of this confederacy when resolved on separation. The only bonds that can permanently unite us are moral ones."* The Declaration of Independence laid it down as a universal principle that governments derive their authority from the consent of

*"Discourse on Spiritual Freedom," Channing's works, People's edition, vol. II, pages 96, 97. We are informed by the correspondent to whom we owe the extract, that in an edition of Channing's works published at Boston, during the civil war, this passage is suppressed, If so, its significance is increased.

the governed, and to that avowal ex-President Adams had appealed as his justification for presenting a petition from some citizens of Massachusetts for the dissolution of the Union.* President Lincoln, himself had used language in the early part of his career which reads almost like a vindication of the Southern Revolution. The idea of secession was not unfamiliar even in New England, when New England was groaning under the ascendancy of the Democratic party. These things are mentioned not to prove that secession was right; but to prove that those who thought coercion wrong were not necessarily enemies of mankind or even of the American people.

The new confederation had from the first de facto the characteristics of a nation. It had a regular government deriving its power from popular suffrage and completely commanding the obedience of the people throughout the whole of a vast and compact territory. It was perfectly organized for all the purposes of legislation, administration and public justice. It had on foot armaments sufficient to defend its territory, and enforce the respect of foreign powers.

After a vain attempt to effect a reconciliation by offering fresh guarantees to slavery,+ the Northern Confederation proceeded to subjugate the Southern by force of arms. Its object in doing so was to restore the Union, in other words to recover lost territory and power. With the same object George III had attempted to subjugate the seceding colonies; but George III had not recognized the dependence of government on the will of the governed. With a small minority the desire to destroy slavery was from the first the ruling motive. But on behalf of the Government such a motive was distinctly disclaimed by Mr. Seward, who instructed his representative in England to

*Congressional Globe, vol. II: p. 168.

+See the resolutions of Congress and those of the House of Representatives. Feb. 1861.

state that slavery was in no way threatened, and to reject any sympathy tendered on antislavery grounds. The recovery of lost territory and power was a natural object, and perhaps as the world goes not immoral; but it was not one which could be expected to excite the unanimous and enthusiastic sympathy of the human race, or in favour of which other nations could be called upon to suspend all ordinary rules of action. Great Britain especially might be excused for regarding it with comparative coolness, as she was warned from the first, with the usual violence of vituperation, by leading organs of American opinion that as soon as the South had been crushed, the victorious arms of the re-united republic would be turned against her American possessions.

The war was waged from the beginning to the end as a regular war between nations. In no single instance did the North venture to treat the Southerners or any of them as rebels. General Butler was lauded for hav. ing "hanged a rebel" at New Orleans; but the man in question was hanged, not for rebellion, but under the laws of war, for rising against the garrison after the surrender of the city. That the Southerners were mere rebels was a fiction which derived some colour from the circumstance of Secession and which was very naturally cherished at the North; but the conduct of foreign powers was necessarily regulated, and must in reason be judged, by facts and not by fictions. The trophies of which the North is full are not trophies of a victory over an insurrection; they are trophies of a conquest. On the continent of Europe the war excited comparatively little interest. But Great Britain was so intimately connected by origin, language and commercial ties with the United States that the conflict may be said to have morally extended to her shores. The first feeling among the British was that of alarm at the impending ruin of the cotton trade, and with it of the industry which supported millions of the peo

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