signs of natural decay. And here it may not be inopportunely stated, that when Master Parr had outlived a century by some years, a certain youthful indiscretion brought on him the penalty of doing church-penance in a white sheet ! Speculating on the average age of mankind, and animals in general, some have expressed surprise that the organism should wear out at all, seeing that the materials of it are so constantly replenished; others, on the contrary, have wondered that the mechanism should last so long as it ordinarily does.

illustration of extreme old age is in question, we all recur to Master Parr. He was an old man certainly, a very old man; but by no means the oldest of whom authentic records exist. Old Jenkins beats him. Of Jenkins more anon. The very oldest man I can find account of is Thomas Carn, who, according to the parish-register of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, died 28th January, 1588, æt. two hundred and seven. He was born in the reign of Richard II. in 1381. He lived in the reigns of ten sovereigns, viz., Richard II., Henries IV., V. and

Some years ago, when Parliament had closed and London was deserted-when the silly season, as newspaper-people call it, had fairly set in-the leading journal admitted to its columas a series of letters, the general purport of which was to cast a doubt on records of extreme longevity. Could it be demonstrated that, since the existence of scriptural patriarchs, any man or any woman had completed a hundred years ?

In reference to the former, it has been said VI., Richard III., Henries VII. and VIII., Edthat every part of a living animal's body under-ward VI., Mary and Elizabeth. goes renewal once in about three months; but this is not strictly correct. Every soft part of the body may, indeed probably does, come under that process of regeneration in the time specified, gelatine or the soft portion of the bones inclusive. The composition of our bodies alters with age, notwithstanding. During life something goes on comparable to the furring of a tea-kettle or the fouling of a steam-boiler. Hard earthy concretions deposit in the heart, impeding its movements; in the arteries, impairing the elasticity needful to their vital functions. Vainly are the soft portions of our bodies renovated, whilst those earthy depositions continue to be formed. The longer we live the more brittle do we grow. Young children can fall about, rarely breaking their bones; whereas old people often fracture their limbs by the mere exertion of turning in bed.

Bearing in mind the fact, that as we grow older we become more brittle, this is explained; and being explained, shall we not marvel that life's fire burns so long? Consider what the animal machine has to do to keep itself alive and going, the heart above all. Taking an average of different ages, the human heart may be considered to beat one hundred thousand times in the twenty-four hours. A human adult may be considered to hold from fifty to sixty pounds of blood; and this has to be kept in continuous motion by the pulsating heart to the very end of life. The mechanical labour is enormous. Were a mechanician to devise a machine of ordinary materials for overcoming the weight of fifty or sixty pounds, as happens to the blood, repairs would be incessant, the machine would soon wear out.

I do not know how it happens that, when an

1

Such was the general question; and much argument was expended to prove the negative. Amongst others reasons for disbelieving the statements of persons of extreme age, their failure of memory was insisted on; also a certain pride of age, that dawns and dominates, just like the pride of youth at earlier epochs of life. Deferring to these arguments in the general application, it is still impossible to set aside the precise testimony of certain cases. However easy it would be for a supra-centerarian to tell an untruth, or to make a mistake, as to the bare statement of age, it would not be easy-rather would it be impossible-for him to make the bare statement consist with cross-questioning founded upon consideration of events and historical periods. The extreme age of Jenkins he died at one hundred and sixty-nine-is attested by the following line of. as it would seem, unimpeachable evidence.

Henry Jenkins is said to have been bora at Bolton-upon-Swale, Yorkshire, in 1500, and to have followed the active employment of fisherman for about a hundred and forty years. Being produced as a witness on a trial at the Yorkshire assizes, to prove a contested right of way, he swore to near one hundred and fifty years memory, during all which time he said he remembered the right of way. 'Beware wha:

you are swearing,' said the judge; 'there are two men in the court each above eighty-they have both sworn they have known no such right of way.'

'Those men,' replied Jenkins, are boys to me.' Upon which the judge inquired of those men how old they took Jenkins to be. Their answer was, they knew Jenkins very well, but not his age; for that he was a very old man when they were boys.

Here, then, we have evidence of the great age of this patriarch,-evidence, so far as it goes, of the most satisfactory kind; educed, as it was, from the testimony of those who, being in a certain sense antagonists, can hardly be assumed to have gone out of their way to enhance his antiquity. Evidence equally satisfactory and more precise, as it goes to fix his age exactly, was elicited by judicial crossquestioning founded on comparison of historical dates. Being brought before a court of law to give evidence, he testified to one hundred and twenty years having been born before parish-registers were kept, these only having been established by the 30th of Henry VIII.

Is growing old an art to be acquired? is it a matter of eating, drinking, and avoiding? These are amongst the questions that people, desirous of growing very old, will not fail to propose to themselves. And thus may we reply: Viability, or the capacity of living long, wrote somebody, is an inheritance. Like talent, it may be cultivated; like talent, it may be perverted; but it exists independent of all cultivation. Some men have a talent for long life. Longevity tends to be hereditary. M. Charles Lejoncourt, in his Galerie des Centenaires, publishes some cnrious examples. He cites a daylabourer, who died at one hundred and eight; his father having lived to one hundred and four, and his grandfather to one hundred and thatching and salmon-fishing. I was thatch-eight. His daughter, then living, had arrived ing when served with your subpoena, and can dub a hook with any man in Yorkshire.'

This seemed so extraordinary that Jenkins was cross-questioned with reference to historical occurrences. What remarkable battle or event had happened in his memory? Flodden Field,' said Jenkins: I being then turned twelve years of age.' How did he live?

By

Reference to Flodden Field brought more cross-questioning. His reply was consistent, and still more confirmatory. When eleven or twelve years old, he said, he was sent to Northallerton in the North Riding, with a horse-load of arrows to be used in the battle of Flodden Field. From Northallerton the arrows were sent on to the field of battle by a bigger boy, all the men being employed getting-in the harvest. The battle of Flodden Field was fought September 9th, 1513.

Being farther questioned, Jenkins said that he had been butler to Lord Conyers of Hornby Castle, when Marmaduke Brodelay, lord abbot of Fountains, did frequently visit his lord, and drink a hearty glass with him; that his lord often sent him to inquire how the abbot did, who always sent for him to his lodg

at eighty. In another page of M. Lejoncourt's treatise, we find a saddler whose grandfather died at one hundred and twelve, his father at one hundred and thirteen, and he himself at one hundred and fifteen. This man, two years before his death, being asked by Louis XIV. how he had managed to live so long?' Sire,' said he, 'by acting on two principles since I was fifty; the principles of keeping my winecellar open and my heart shut.'

A more surprising illustration of hereditary longevity is furnished by John Golembiewski, a Pole. In 1846 this man was living,age d one hundred and two. His father died at one hundred and twenty-one, his grandfather at one hundred and thirty. This Pole had been eighty years a common soldier. He had served in thirty-five campaigns under Napoleon; had even survived the terrible Russian campaign in spite of five wounds.

In respect to sex, I do not find that women figure as supra-centenarians in any way comparable to men. Old women of eighty-five or ninety are plentiful enough, but not antique women-female old Parrs and Jenkinses. This rather unsettles the somewhat common beliefor is it a petulant outburst only?-that old wo-tating heart pauses in its beat as if worn anu men never die.

Married life or celibacy-what shall we say? Unfortunately I can come to no conclusion at

ART AND MORALITY.

From Macmillan's Magazine for October.

PINOSA says somewhere that our passions | that passion and art must be enemies, so far s all imply confusion of thought; and of course he proves this with all the parade of geometrical method which is so satisfying to some and so tedious to others. But everybody can verify the aphorism for himself by observing that he becomes calm as soon as he can attend to what it is that has disturbed him. And this suggests

lity, but the danger is that our feeling for the subject should be too strong for the poetry which inspired it, that we should abandon ourselves to a blind glow of pleasurable emotion and lose sight of the vivid train of clear, articulate images which set our hearts on fire at first. And there is another safeguard to morality; perfect art must be more than adequate, it must be satisfactory; it is condemned by its own standard till it can produce a type which can be contemplated upon all sides and throughout all time. The situation of Maggie Tulliver, in the boat with her cousin's betrothed, has many elements of artistic beauty; it is romantic, intense, and elevated; but it is not satisfactory ideally because it is not satisfactory morally: like Maggie, we cannot forget the beginning, we cannot but look forward to the end. It is well that the dream should be broken; though the voyage on the flood to Tom and to death has less charm, it has more peace; the imagination can dwell upon it. The new pagan treatment of the Tannhäuser legend seems capable of a more musical intensity than the traditional Christian treatment, yet it can hardly be doubted that Heine was right on purely artistic grounds in giving up this intensity, and following his own temper, and turning all to irony. Mr. Swinburne has to undertake the impossible task of reconciling us to the thought of a Hell, too intensely realized to be poetical; the knight has to promise that he will remember and rejoice in Venus there we could not have believed it of a saint. Perfect art does not deal in paradoxes. This carries us a step further. In order that art may be adequate and satisfactory it must be sane and rational, it must be the expression not of revolt but of harmony, it must assume and reflect an ideal order in the world. The impulse of revolt is strong both in Byron and Shelley, and they are among the greatest of poets, but the law holds good in them. The grandest canto of Childe Harold is the last, where despair and disdain are passing into a calm that at least is half-resigned. Shelley's anguish for himself and for mankind goes off incessantly into mere shrieking whenever it takes the form of a revolt against the tyranny of kings and priests, it becomes musical again when it blends with the mute sorrow of "the World's Wanderers," and becomes a voice in the universal chorus of the whole creation that

groaneth and travaileth in pain together. It is not required of art to be cheerful, neither is it required of morality as such. Marcus Aurelius and George Eliot present "altruism" under a form that makes the Epicurean burden-" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die "-glad tidings of great joy to flesh and blood. But though George Eliot's fascination is painful, it is complete, there is nothing to disgust and emancipate us for her art rests upon the acknowledgment of an order to which all must be subject whether they will or no, though the order exists for other ends than the happiness, or even the perfection, of the creatures under it. We need not inquire whether such a morality is enough for life, but, in its obedience, art finds perfect freedom. Or rather, absolute art is not subject to absolute morality, but both are expressions of one ideal order which must always be conceived as holy, just, and good, though it is not always conceived as giving life and peace.

The art which is always claiming to be emancipated from morality is not the absolute art; perhaps the morality which it rebels against is hardly the absolute morality. The practical question has to be discussed on a lower level, but it is not to be dismissed as though the art which comes into conflict with morality were spurious because it is not the highest. True, the perfections of art are its safeguards, but art Its may be so much without being perfect. perfection exists rather for itself than for us, though we rejoice in it afar off; what we need is that it should be stimulating, and this too is what the artist needs, for he too is of the same clay as we. Like us, he desires fresher emotions than the ordinary round of life supplies, though this too has a satisfaction of its own for those who cherish its affections. And the craving which is occasional with us is habitual with him. He refuses the false gratification that might be found for it if he would make virtue always culminate in some kind of Lord Mayor's Show; life loses such flavour as it has in the attempt to make it just a little better, a little easier and a little prettier. If the artist will not idealize ordinary life by falsifying it, and cannot idealize it in the light of the higher law, or sustain himself upon the level of ideal action, it remains for him to go beyond the world since he cannot rise above it. He tries to escape from the hackneyed routine of domestic duties and feli

It never occurred to Shakespeare, or Titian, or Leonardo, that the choice of Hercules lay between life and art: art in its supreme epochs has always been nourished and exalted by the chastened or unchastened pride of life. When we speak of choosing art for art, we acknowledge that the pride of life does not need any longer to be mortified, because it is dead. When life and art are parted,

"Stratus humi palmes viduas desiderat ulmos." But the gleaning of the vintage still is sweet; only when a man has renounced the rewards of life for art, he has not escaped its obligations; if any were mad enough to lose his soul for art, he would find he had lost art too. We cannot expect an ideal answer to a question which it is a misfortune to have to ask. Artists who have not attained the vision of eternal and

and we have no right to try their work by an ideal standard till we have tried ourselves. Every one must apply as he can the principle that all art is lawful for a man which can be produced or enjoyed within the limits of a safe and wholesome life. When we know that Etty lived quietly and soberly with his sister, and was grateful to her for finding him respectable models, we know that he had succeeded for himself in finding a true relation between mor

cities into an unsatisfactory fairy-land of ex- | and life illuminated by art. treme passions, of untried desires, of unfettered impulses, working themselves out within the exciting complexities of abnormal situations. Since he cannot have the true ideal, and will not put up with the false, he demands the whole range of the real, and chooses to be always gleaning on the outskirts of possibility. The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life are not really ideal, but they have their ideal moments (or they could not tempt us), and there comes a time when art finds it hard to part with one of these. The only justification that has yet been put forward for the persistent attempt to pluck the "flowers of evil" is that the artist shares the general dislike to their fruit, and that, whether he plucks or no, the world is sure to wear them. There are very few like John Foster, to whom almost all art, especially all classical art, was essen-ideal beauty have no right to an ideal liberty, tially immoral because it nourished the pride of life art that appeals merely to curiosity or to the extreme sense of beauty is always thought safe and respectable; when we speak of immoral art we mean art that deals with sensual impulses, or rouses rebellion against the order of society; perhaps too there are many who object to the first because it results in the second. And even on this point public opinion is rather emphatic than clear. It would be hard to find a popular definition of literary immora-ality and art. Yet we should think hardly of a lity which would not condemn the episode of Paolo and Francesca; it is almost as if Dante had come to curse them, and lo! he blessed them altogether: they are always together, and they always love; there are more who could learn to look to such a hell with yearning than choose to enter the purgatory of Gerontius. The Laureate may seem as unimpeacheable on this score as Dante, yet it is hard not to think Aylmer's Field an immoral poem. The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God, and the only outcome of Aylmer's Field is the wrath of man. We have an evil action represented in an evil spirit; if we are not to condemn this, how are we to condemn such a poem as "The Leper," à priori, merely because Mr. Swinburne follows Luther's maxim, pecca fortiter? In truth, the question within what limits it is safe to pursue "art for art," is hardly one that could be asked in an ideal state of things. Then art would be continually enriched by life,

man who collected exclusively what Etty preduced exclusively. An idle man might get all the pleasure from Etty's pictures that they can give, and that is not a safe pleasure for an idle man, but the pictures themselves were the work of honest labour-and qui laborat'orat. The safeguard that the artist has in the very necessity of working we may bring from our own work, and then we shall be most likely to find it anew in strenuous sympathy with his. To the pure all things are pure; it is recorded of one of the best public men of America that even the ballet always filled him with religious rapture.

It is fortunate to possess such a temper, 44 would be silly and dangerous to aim at it; individuals must be guided by their own desire for virtue, and by the consent of virtuous and cultivated men. It is suggestive to observe that the limits of their toleration vary according to the medium in which the artist works.