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 often er 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 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 Emerson. The superficial observer sees the snowy locks and wrinkled brow, and takes these as the evidences of that ripened intellect 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 muscle 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 anticipating a comparatively vigorous senility, if we outlive our generation and outlive our usefulness? The grand-children become the men and women who govern the world; and they seldom work harmoniously with the grand-fathers. "Old age for counsel!" But the busy workers have little time to consult old age, and little inclination to follow its advice when adverse. Will the mere fact of having lived many years console Old Age for his physical inconveniences, 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 And the names he loved to hear, On the tomb ?" As he looks on life's busy whirl, so changeless 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. W EDITORIAL. own colonies; who, at the Congress of 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 our last number went to press 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 Secession was facilitated, and the conduct in some measure also to Canada, whose of its authors was more or less justified in Southern sympathies real or supposed, were the eyes of many Americans and in those of included among the causes of offence. In the world at large by the idea prevalent at the dispute which has arisen about the Treaty the South, and extensively entertained even between the two parties at Ottawa, we have at the North, as to the individual sovereignty no inclination to take part. An occasion of the States, an idea somewhat loosely exfor reviewing their respective policy may pressed by the phrase State Right. Many present itself hereafter. 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 “ 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 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 our *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: +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 having "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 ple. This feeling rose almost to the point of anguish, though already, as those who were in the United States at the time testify, the Americans were ascribing the war to the machinations of Great Britain. The feeling against slavery and its partisans was also strong, and general. England was pledged to the Anti-slavery cause by her avowed principles, by her most cherished memories, by a great expenditure not only of treasure but of blood. If the aristocratic party at heart viewed the disruption of the great democratic power with not unnatural complacency, it did not venture openly to defy the traditional sentiment of the nation; and even the Times wrote against the slave-owners. But the avowal of the Northern Government that the war was not directed against slavery, the language of the American press, the publication by the American Government of the offensive despatch of Mr. Cassius Clay, the heroic energy and valour displayed by the South, the apparent want during the early part of the struggle of similar qualities on the side of the North, the Trent affair, the wearisome protraction of the conflict, and a growing impatience of the ruinous suspension of British industrythese circumstances, combined with the skilful propagandism of the South, wrought in course of time a partial change. The aristocratic party no longer feared to avow their political sympathy with the Southern aristocracy, and they were joined by a large commercial party which had its centre in the great cotton port. On the other hand the popular party continued to manifest its unwavering and ardent sympathy with the North. It held public meetings in all the great cities; it waged an incessant war of opinion through the press; and in spite of a limited franchise, and an unreformed representation, it was strong enough, not only to prevent Great Britain from lending aid to the Confederates, but to prevent any motion for the recognition of the Confederacy from being even put to the vote in the House of Commons. Nor were there any adherents of the Northern cause more staunch than the mechanics, whose bread was taken from their mouths and whose prospects were involved in the deepest gloom by the prolongation of the war. That these things are not forgotten by the people of the United States, appears from the use which they now make of the speeches of their old English friends and allies in framing their indictments against England. Between the two parties whose sympathies were pronounced, there was a great mass which could scarcely be said to sympathize with either; but which, so far as it was swayed at all, was swayed partly by a vague feeling in favour of the weaker side, partly by the desire that the war might come to an end, and that the cotton trade might be restored. The feeling of aversion to a bloody, ruinous and apparently hopeless conflict largely prevailed, apart from any other sentiment, and was perfectly distinguishable from sympathy with slavery or with the South, though visited by the Americans with the same reprobation. What the personal feelings of the several members of the British Government were, is not really known. It is confidently asserted that Lord Palmerston was friendly to the slave-owners; yet he had more than once embroiled England with foreign powers by his almost fanatical hostility to the slave trade. The Duke of Argyll and Mr. Milner Gibson were, it may safely be said, friendly to the North; and the Duke of Newcastle, a man singularly steady in love and hatred, retained a very warm recollection of the hospitable reception which he had met with in the States when he visited them in company with the Prince of Wales. Collectively, however, the Government took up and maintained to the end a position of neutrality. It refused to recognize the South. It refused to receive the Southern envoys. Even social courtesy was withheld from them by the Prime Minister, lest it should seem |