Chapter IV: Part 4

But in how strong a light has this been placed by the American teacher, Jacob Abbott, whose writings have obtained so wide a circulation in England. “Life,” he says, “if you understand by it the season of preparation for eternity, is more than half gone; life, so far as it presents opportunities and facilities for penitence and pardon,—so far as it bears on the formation of character, and is to be considered as a period of probation,—is unquestionably more than half gone to those who are between fifteen and twenty. In a vast number of cases it is more than half gone even _in duration_; and if we consider the thousand influences which crowd around the years of childhood and youth, winning us to religion, and making a surrender of ourselves to Jehovah easy and pleasant,—and, on the other hand, look forward beyond the years of maturity, and see these influences losing all their power, and the heart becoming harder and harder under the deadening effects of continuance in sin,—we shall not doubt a moment that the years of immaturity make a far more important part of our time of probation than all those that follow.”

That pious man, who, while he lived, was the Honourable Charles How, and might properly now be called the honoured, says, that “twenty years might be deducted for education from the threescore and ten, which are the allotted sum of human life; this portion,” he adds, “is a time of discipline and restraint, and young people are never easy till they are got over it.”

There is indeed during those years much of restraint, of weariness, of hope, and of impatience; all which feelings lengthen the apparent duration of time. Sufferings are not included here; but with a large portion of the human race, in all Christian countries (to our shame be it spoken), it makes a large item in the account; there is no other stage of life in which so much gratuitous suffering is endured,—so much that might have been spared,—so much that is a mere wanton, wicked addition to the sum of human misery, arising solely and directly from want of feeling in others, their obduracy, their caprice, their stupidity, their malignity, their cupidity, and their cruelty.[30]

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Footnote 30:

_The Doctor._

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PASSING GENERATIONS.

“The deaths of some, and the marriages of others,” says Cowper, “make a new world of it every thirty years. Within that space of time the majority are displaced, and a new generation has succeeded. Here and there one is permitted to stay longer, that there may not be wanting a few grave dons like myself to make the observation.”

Man is a self-survivor every year;
Man, like a stream, is in perpetual flow.
Death’s a destroyer of quotidian prey:
My youth, my noontide his, my yesterday;
The bold invader shares the present hour,
Each moment on the former shuts the grave.
While man is growing, life is in decrease,
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun,
As tapers waste that instant they take fire.—_Young._

Yet, infinitely short as the term of human life is when compared with time to come, it is not so in relation to time past. A hundred and forty of our own generations carry us back to the Deluge, and nine more of antediluvian measure to the Creation,—which to us is the beginning of time; “for time itself is but a novelty, a late and upstart thing in respect of the ancient of days.”[31] They who remember their grandfather, and see their grandchildren, have seen persons belonging to five out of that number; and he who attains the age of threescore, has seen two generations pass away. “The created world,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it, and may be after it.” There is no time of life, after we become capable of reflection, in which the world to come must not to any considerate mind appear of more importance to us than this; no time in which we have not a greater stake there. When we reach the threshold of old age, all objects of our early affections have gone before us, and in the common course of mortality a great proportion of the later. Not without reason did the wise compilers of our admirable Liturgy place next in order after the form of Matrimony, the services for the Visitation and Communion of the Sick, and for the Burial of the Dead.[32]

A home-tourist, halting in the quiet churchyard of Mortlake, in Surrey, about half a century since, fell into the following reflective train of calculation of generations:

“I reflected that, as it is now more than four hundred years since this ground became the depository of the dead, some of its earliest occupants might, without an hyperbole, have been ancestors of the whole contemporary English nation. If we suppose that a man was buried in this churchyard 420 years ago, who left six children, each of whom had three children, who again had, on an average, the same number in every generation of thirty years; then, in 420 years, or fourteen generations, his descendants might be multiplied as under:

1st generation 6
2d ” 18
3d ” 54
4th ” 162
5th ” 486
6th ” 1458
7th ” 4374
8th ” 13,122
9th ” 39,366
10th ” 118,098
11th ” 354,274
12th ” 1,062,812
13th ” 3,188,436
14th ” 9,565,308

That is to say, nine millions and a half of persons; or, as nearly as possible, the exact population might at this day be descended in a direct line from any individual buried in this or any other churchyard in the year 1395, who left six children, each of whose descendants have had on the average three children! And, by the same law, every individual who has six children may be the root of as many descendants within 420 years, provided they increase on the low average of only three in every branch. His descendants would represent an inverted triangle, of which he would constitute the lower angle.

“To place the same position in another point of view, I calculated also that every individual now living must have had for his ancestor every parent in Britain living in the year 1125, the age of Henry I., taking the population of that period at 8,000,000. Thus, as every individual must have had a father and mother, or two progenitors, each of whom had a father and mother, or four progenitors, each generation would double its progenitors every thirty years. Every person living may, therefore, be considered as the apex of a triangle, of which the base would represent the whole population of a remote age.

1815. Living individual 1
1785. His father and mother 2
1755. Their fathers and mothers 4
1725. ” ” 8
1695. ” ” 16
1665. ” ” 32
1635. ” ” 64
1605. ” ” 128
1575. ” ” 256
1545. ” ” 512
1515. ” ” 1,024
1485. ” ” 2,048
1455. ” ” 4,096
1425. ” ” 8,192
1395. ” ” 16,384
1365. ” ” 32,768
1335. ” ” 65,536
1305. ” ” 131,072
1275. ” ” 262,144
1245. ” ” 524,288
1215. ” ” 1,048,576
1185. ” ” 2,097,152
1155. ” ” 4,194,304
1125. ” ” 8,388,608

That is to say, if there have been a regular co-mixture of marriages, every individual of the living race must of necessity be descended from parents who lived in Britain in 1125. Some districts or clans may require a longer period for the co-mixture, and different circumstances may cut off some families, and expand others; but, in general, the lines of families would cross each other, and become interwoven, _like the lines of lattice-work_. A single intermixture, however remote, would unite all the subsequent branches in common ancestry, rendering the contemporaries of every nation members of one expanded family, after the lapse of an ascertainable number of generations.”[33]

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Footnote 31:

Dr. Johnson.

Footnote 32:

_The Doctor._

Footnote 33:

Sir Richard Phillips’s _Morning’s Walk from London to Kew_.

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AVERAGE DURATION OF LIFE.

The Assurance of Lives has often been regarded, by weak-minded persons, as an interference with the ways of Providence, which is highly reprehensible. But it can be shown that calculation of lives can be averaged with certainty. Mr. Babbage, in his work on the Assurance of Lives, observes: “Nothing is more proverbially uncertain than the duration of human life, where the maxim is applied to an individual; yet there are few things less subject to fluctuation than the average duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the inhabitants of a village or small town, the number of deaths is more uniform; and in still larger bodies, as among the inhabitants of a kingdom, the uniformity is such, that the excess of deaths in any year above the average number seldom exceeds a small fractional part of the whole. In the two periods, each of fifteen years, beginning at 1780, the number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in any year did not fall short of, or exceed, the average number one-thirteenth part of the whole; nor did the number dying in any year differ from the number of those dying in the next by a tenth part.”

In a paper on Life Assurance, in the _Edinburgh Review_, the Average Mortality of Europe is thus stated: “In England 1 person dies annually in every 45; in France, 1 in every 42; in Prussia, 1 in every 38; in Austria, 1 in every 33; in Russia, 1 in every 28. Thus England exhibits the lowest mortality; and the state of the public health is so improved, that the present duration of existence may be regarded (in contrast to what it was a hundred years ago) as, in round numbers, _four to three_.”

The Registrar-General gives the following statistical results: “The average age of life is 33⅓ years. One-fourth of the born die before they reach the age of seven years, and the half before the seventeenth year. Out of 100 persons, only six reach the age of 60 years and upwards, while only 1 in 1000 reaches the age of 100 years. Out of 500, only 1 attains 80 years. Out of the thousand million living persons, 330,000,000 die annually, 91,000 daily, 3730 every hour, 60 every minute, consequently 1 every second. The loss is, however, balanced by the gain in new births. Tall men are supposed to live longer than short ones. Women are generally stronger than men until their fiftieth year, afterwards less so. Marriages are in proportion to single life (bachelors and spinsters) as 100:75. Both births and deaths are more frequent in the night than in the day.”

PASTIMES OF CHILDHOOD RECREATIVE TO MAN.

Paley regarded the pleasure which the amusements of childhood afford as a striking instance of the beneficence of the Deity. We have several instances of great men descending from the more austere pursuits to these simple but innocent pastimes. The Persian ambassadors found Agesilaus, the Lacedæmonian monarch, riding on a stick. The ambassadors found Henry the Fourth playing on the carpet with his children; and it is said that Domitian, after he had possessed himself of the Roman empire, amused himself by catching flies. Socrates, if tradition speaks truly, was partial to the recreation of riding on a wooden horse; for which, as Valerius Maximus tells us, his pupil Alcibiades laughed at him. (Is not this the origin of our rocking-horse?) Did not Archytas,

He who could scan the earth and ocean’s bound,
And tell the countless sands that strew the shore,

as Horace says, invent the children’s rattle? Toys have served to unbend the wise, to occupy the idle, to exercise the sedentary, and to instruct the ignorant. To come to our own times: we have heard of a Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, a man of grave years and thoughts, being surprised playing at leap-frog with his young nephews.

The same desire to unstring the bow, as old Æsop taught, impels sturdy workmen, let loose from their toil, to seek diversion in the amusements of boyhood. Often have we seen scores of men break forth from a factory or printing-office for their dinner-hour, and in great measure disport themselves like schoolboys in a playground.

PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION LATE IN LIFE.

Dugald Stewart, in his _Essay on the Cultivation of Intellectual Habits_, predicates, in persons of mature age, what may be termed the enjoyment of a second season of enjoyments far more refined than the first. Thus he says: “Instances have frequently occurred of individuals in whom the power of imagination has, at an advanced period of life, been found susceptible of culture to a wonderful degree. In such men, what an accession is gained to their most refined pleasures! What enchantments are added to their most ordinary perceptions! The mind, awakening, as if from a trance, to a new existence, becomes habituated to the most interesting aspects of life and of nature; the intellectual eye is ‘purged of its film;’ and things the most familiar and unnoticed disclose charms invisible before. The same objects and events which were lately beheld with indifference occupy now all the powers and capacities of the soul, the contrast between the present and the past serving only to enhance and to endear so unlooked-for an acquisition. What Gray has so finely said of _the pleasures of vicissitude_ conveys but a faint image of what is experienced by the man who, after having lost in vulgar occupations and vulgar amusements his earliest and most precious years, is thus introduced at last to a new heaven and a new earth:

The meanest floweret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are op’ning Paradise.

Nothing can be more deplorable than a man who has outlived the likings, and perchance the innocence, of his early life; which is by no means rare, if they have not grown out of the study and love of nature, for this clings to the heart in all the vicissitudes of life,—in adversity as well as in prosperity; in sickness as well as in health; even to extreme old age, when almost every other worldly source of pleasure is dried up. Hear the testimony of Hannah More, at the age of eighty-two: “The only one of my youthful fond attachments,” says she, “which exists still in full force, is a passion for scenery, raising flowers, and landscape gardening.” Well indeed will it be for the young if they follow the example of this venerable woman, and early acquire a passion for scenery and flowers. For as they pass through life, they will find the world often frowning upon them, but the flowers will always smile. And it is sweet, in the day of adversity, to be met with a smile.

We remember a touching instance of the love of flowers lighting up the last hours of a botanist who had wooed nature in the picturesque vale of Mickleham, in Surrey. A few short hours before his death, he turned to his niece and said: “Mary, it is a fine morning; go and see if _Scilla verna_ is come in flower.”

WHAT IS MEMORY?

Man possesses a nervous system pervaded by a nervous force, the modification of which manifests itself to our consciousness in the varied phenomena of what we call Sensation. From Sensation, the next step is to Perception. Sensation, we know, as such, dies away from the consciousness, or rather is obliterated by fresh impressions upon the sensorium. We cannot retain a feeling in perpetuity. But when a definite sensation has been excited, or a distinct experience has been acquired, something remains behind; and upon these _residua_, left in the structure of the nerves, or the cerebral tissues, or the animating soul, and on the permanence of these _residua_, rests the whole possibility of reminiscence. Upon this blending and organisation round the centre of mind-life follows the faculty of Memory, or that power which the mind possesses of making a peculiar representation of an object for itself, of creating a special idea of it by giving greater prominence to some features, and letting others sink away unthought of, till there remains an image, the product of its own free activity, which it can mentally connect with other trains of ideas, and thus multiply, as it were, the bridges by which it can return to it at any period.[34]

Byron has beautifully personified this paramount image:

She was a form of life and light,
That seen became a part of sight;
And rose, where’er I turned mine eye,
The Morning-star of Memory!

“Mere abstraction, or what is called absence of mind, is often attributed, very unphilosophically, to a want of memory. La Fontaine, in a dreaming mood, forgot his own child, and, after warmly commending him, observed how proud he should be to have such a son. In this kind of abstraction external things are either only dimly seen, or are utterly overlooked; but the memory is not necessarily asleep. In fact, its too intense activity is frequently the cause of the abstraction. This faculty is usually the strongest when the other faculties are in their prime, and fades in old age, when there is a general decay of mind and body. Old men, indeed, are proverbially narrative; and from this circumstance it sometimes appears as if the memory preserves a certain portion of its early acquisitions to the last, though in the general failure of the intellect it loses its active energy. It receives no new impressions, but old ones are confirmed. The brain seems to grow harder. Old images become fixtures. It is recorded of Pascal, that, till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he forgot nothing of what he had done, read, or thought in any part of his rational age. The Admirable Crichton could repeat backwards any speech he had made. Magliabecchi, the Florentine librarian, could recollect whole volumes; and once supplied an author from memory with a copy of his own work, of which the original was lost. Pope has observed that Bolingbroke had so great a memory, that if he was alone and without books he could refer to a particular subject in them, and write as fully on it as another man would with all his books about him. Woodfall’s extraordinary power of reporting the debates in the House of Commons without the aid of written memoranda is well known. During a debate he used to close his eyes and lean with both hands upon his stick, resolutely excluding all extraneous associations. The accuracy and precision of his reports brought his newspaper into great repute. He would retain a full recollection of a particular debate a fortnight after it had occurred, and during the intervention of other debates. He used to say that it was put by in a corner of his mind for future reference.”[35]

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Footnote 34:

See an admirable paper on Dr. Morell’s _Introduction to Mental
Philosophy_, in _Saturday Review_; also _Mysteries of Life, Death, and
Futurity_, for the following articles: “What is Memory?” “How the
Function of Memory takes place;” “Persistence of Impressions;” “Value
of Memory;” “Registration;” and “Decay of Memory;” pp. 69-75.

Footnote 35:

_Literary Leaves_, by D. L. Richardson.

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CONSOLATION IN GROWING OLD.

Montaigne said of Cicero _On Old Age_, “It gives one an appetite for old age.” Its persuasive eloquence is the inspiration of an elevated philosophy. Flourens has cleverly said, “The moral aspect of old age is its best side. We cannot grow old without losing our _physique_, nor also without our _morale_ gaining by it. This is a noble compensation.”

M. Reveillé-Parise says: “In a green old age, when from fifty-five to seventy-five years, and sometimes more, the life of the mind has a scope, a consistence, and remarkable solidity, man having then truly attained to the height of his faculties.”

Patience is the privilege of age. A great advantage to the man who has lived is, that he knows how to wait. Again, experience is an old man’s memory.

Buffon was seventy years of age (this was young for Buffon, he lived to eighty-one) when he wrote _The Epochs of Nature_, in which he calls old age a prejudice. Without our arithmetic we should not, according to Buffon, know that we were old. “Animals,” he says, “do not know it; it is only by our arithmetic that we judge otherwise.”

Buffon having settled on his estate at Montbard, in Burgundy, there
pursued his studies with such regularity that the history of one day
seems to have been that of all the others through a period of fifty
years. After he was dressed, he dictated letters, and regulated his
domestic affairs; and at six o’clock he retired to his studies in a
pavilion in his garden, about a furlong from the house. This
pavilion was only furnished with a large wooden secretary and an
arm-chair; and within it was another cabinet, ornamented with
drawings of birds and beasts. Prince Henry of Prussia called it the
cradle of natural history; and Rousseau, before he entered it, used
to fall on his knees, and kiss the threshold. Here Buffon composed
the greater number of his works. At nine o’clock he usually took an
hour’s rest; and his breakfast, a piece of bread and two glasses of
wine, was brought to him. When he had written two hours after
breakfast, he returned to the house. At dinner he enjoyed the
gaieties and trifles of the table. After dinner he slept an hour in
his room; took a solitary walk; and during the rest of the evening
he either conversed with his family or guests, or examined his
papers at his desk. At nine o’clock he went to bed, to prepare
himself for the same routine of judgment and pleasure. He had a most
fervid imagination; and his anxious solicitude for a literary
immortality, “that last infirmity of noble minds,” continually
betrayed him to be a vain man.

“Every day that I rise in good health,” said Buffon to a conceited young man, “have I not the enjoyment of this day as fully as you? If I conform my actions, my appetites, my desires, to the strict impulses of wise nature, am I not as wise and happy as you are? And the view of the past, which causes so much regret to old fools, does it not afford me, on the contrary, the pleasures of memory, agreeable pictures of precious images, which are equal to your objects of pleasure? For these images are sweet; they are pure; they leave upon the mind only pleasing remembrances; the uneasiness, the disappointments, the sorrowful troop which accompanies your youthful pleasures, disappear from the picture which presents them to me. Regrets must disappear also; they are the last sparks of that foolish vanity that never grows old.

“Some one asked Fontenelle, when ninety-five years old, which were the twenty years of his life he most regretted. He replied that he had little to regret; but the age at which he had been most happy was that from forty-five to seventy-five. He made this avowal in sincerity, and he proved what he said by natural and consoling truths. At forty-five, fortune is established; reputation made; consideration obtained; the condition of life established; dreams vanished or fulfilled; projects miscarried or matured; most of the passions calmed, or at least cooled; the career in the work that every man owes to society nearly completed; enemies, or rather the enemies, are fewer, because the counterpoise of merit is known by the public voice,” &c.

Galen, speaking of Hippocrates, and wishing to represent in one word the man who, in his eyes, constitutes the most perfect type of slowly matured wisdom and profound experience, simply calls him _the old man_.

The first rule of the Art of Preserving Life is to know how to be old. “Few men know how to be old,” said La Rochefoucauld. Voltaire has—

Qui n’a pas l’esprit de son âge,
De son âge a tous les malheurs.

The first rule is more philosophic than medical, but is perhaps none the less valuable.

The second rule is to know yourself well; which is also a philosophical precept applied to medicine.

The third rule is properly to conform to regular habits. Old men, who spend one day like another, with the same moderation, the same appetites, live always. “My miracle is existence,” said Voltaire; and if that foolish vanity which never grows old had not induced him, when eighty-four years of age, to make a ridiculous journey to Paris, his miracle would have continued a century, as was the case with Fontenelle.

“Few would believe,” said M. Reveillé-Parise, “how far a little health, well managed, may be made to go.” And Cicero said: “To use what we have, and to act in every thing according to our strength,—such is the rule of the sage.”

Most men die of disease, very few die of mere age. Man has made for himself a sort of artificial life, in which the moral is often worse than the physical; and the physical itself often worse than it would be with habits more serene and calm, more regularly and judiciously exercised.

Haller, the physiologist, says: “Man should be placed among the animals that live the longest: how very unjust, then, are our complaints of the brevity of life!” He then inquires what can be the extreme limit of the life of man; and he gives it as his opinion that man might live not less than two centuries. M. Flourens,[36] however, decides on a century of ordinary life; and at least half a century of extraordinary life is the prospect science holds out to man. Still, as these inferences are drawn from the exceptions of Jenkins and Parr, the opinions must be received accordingly.

Haller, who has collected a great number of examples of Longevity, says that he has found more than

1000 who have lived from 100 to 110 years
60 ” ” 110 to 120 ”
29 ” ” 120 to 130 ”
15 ” ” 130 to 140 ”
6 ” ” 140 to 160 ”

and one who reached the astonishing age of 169 years.

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Footnote 36:

_Human Longevity and the Amount of Life upon the Globe._ By P.
Flourens, Perpetual Secretary to the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1855.

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LENGTH OF DAYS.

There are few records so generally interesting as those of human existence being protracted beyond “threescore years and ten,” and the Psalmist’s limit of “fourscore years.” It is natural to expect every man, woman, and child to take a kindred interest in such matters: the girl or boy reads with wonder the dates upon the tombstones of very aged persons; and old men and women approach these memorials with awe, in proportion to their fancied distance from the same earthly bourn. All cannot alike read the story of the pictured urn, or the mysteries of the inverted torch or the winged mundus; but the uneducated young and old are sensible of the solemnity of the line, “Aged 102 years;” whilst the more pretentious “Hic jacet” only teaches the comparatively few that

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

We are not, therefore, surprised at the implicit belief in such records in times gone by, when no populous village in England was without a man or woman of fourscore years old. It has, however, become of late a matter of some moment to inquire into the authority on which statements of extreme old age have usually rested; and the result has been to shake the testimony of many recorded cases of great longevity.

Lord Bacon, in his _History of Life and Death_, quotes as a fact unquestioned, that a few years before he wrote, a morris-dance was performed in Herefordshire, at the May-games, by eight men, whose ages in the aggregate amounted to eight hundred years! In the seventeenth century, some time after Bacon wrote, two Englishmen are reported to have died at ages greater than almost any of those which have been attained in other nations. According to statements which are printed in the _Philosophical Transactions_ of the Royal Society, as well as his epitaph in Westminster Abbey, Thomas Parr lived 152 years and 9 months; Henry Jenkins, 169 years. The testimony in these extraordinary instances is, however, considered by the Registrar-General by no means conclusive, as it evidently rests on uncertain tradition, and on the very fallible memories of illiterate old men; for there is no mention of documentary evidence in Parr’s case, and the births date back to a period (1538) before the parish registers were instituted by Cromwell.

Yet parish registers are sometimes astounding; for in that of Evercreech, in Somersetshire, occurs this entry: “1588, 20th Dec., Jane Britton, of Evercriche, a Maidden, as she afirmed, of the age of 200 years, was buried.”

Here is a difficulty of belief cleared up. In the register of the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, is entered, among the “Burialles, Thomas Cam, y^e 22d inst. of January 1588 (curiously enough the date of the Somersetshire entry), Aged 207 years, Holywell-street. George Garrow, parish clerk.” In a newspaper paragraph of 1848, this entry is stated to add: “he was born in the year 1381, in the reign of King Richard II., and lived in the reigns of twelve kings and queens.” These words are not, however, in the register; and it is evident that some mischievous person has altered the figure 1 into 2. Sir Henry Ellis, in his _History of Shoreditch_, gives the entry correctly as follows: “Thomas Cam, aged 107, 28 January 1588.”

Another instance, less known, but better authenticated, is that of Sir Ralph Vernon, of Shipbrooke, who was born some time in the thirteenth century, died at the great age of 150; and is said to have been succeeded by his descendant in the sixth generation; he was called “Old Sir Ralph,” or Sir R. “the long-liver.” A deed of settlement by him was the cause of long litigation; and it is said that the papers respecting this law-suit still exist, to prove the fact of the old knight’s patriarchal age.[37]

In Conway churchyard is the tombstone of Lowry Owens, stated to have died “May the 1st, 1766, aged 192;” but the inscription has evidently been recut, and, it is presumed, with a difference, especially as the round of the “9” is above the date-line.

In the church of Abbey Dore, Herefordshire, is a slab to the memory of Elizabeth Lewis, who died “aged 141 years,” which is stated to be confirmed by the parish register.

In the churchyard of Cheve Prior, Worcestershire, is a record of a man who died at the age of 309; doubtless meant for 39, the blundering stonecutter having put the 30 first and 9 afterwards.

In these and similar cases our belief should be in proportion to the trustworthiness of the record, allowance being made for the imperfect state of documents of times when writing was a comparatively rare accomplishment. It is curious to contrast this state of things with the chronicle of our times, when, occasionally, one day’s newspaper records several instances of longevity:

In the _Morning Post_, January 30th, 1858, out of thirty-five deaths
recorded, with the ages, there were five upwards of 60 and under 70;
70 and under 80, seven; in 80th year and upwards, nine; one female,
95; and Mrs. E. Miles, of Bishop Lidyard, near Taunton, 112.

In the obituary of the _Times_, February 20th, 1862, were recorded
the deaths of persons who had attained the following ages: one of
103, one of 94, two of 90, one of 85, one of 84, one of 82, and
eight of 70 years and upwards. And, on April 20th of the same year,
were recorded the deaths of ten persons, whose united ages amount to
828 years, or an average of nearly 83. They comprise one of 100 and
one of 99.

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Footnote 37:

See Burke’s _Peerage and Baronetage_, ed. 1848.

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HISTORIC TRADITIONS THROUGH FEW LINKS.

Of late years considerable interest has been added to the attraction of records of Longevity, by showing through how few individuals may be traced the evidence of far-distant events and incidents in our history.

Mr. Sidney Gibson, F.S.A., relates some curious instances of this class. A person living in 1847, then aged about 61, was frequently assured by his father that, in 1786, he repeatedly saw one Peter Garden, who died in that year at the age of 127 years; and who, when a boy, heard Henry Jenkins give evidence in a court of justice at York, to the effect that, when a boy, he was employed in carrying arrows up the hill before the battle of Flodden Field.

This battle was fought in 1513

Henry Jenkins died in 1670,

at the age of 169

Deduct for his age at the time of

the battle of Flodden Field 12

——— 157

Peter Garden, the man who heard

Jenkins give his evidence, died at 127

Deduct for his age when he saw 11
Jenkins

——— 116

The person whose father knew Peter

Garden was born shortly before
1786,

or seventy years since 70

————

A.D. 1856

So that a person living in 1786 conversed with a man that fought at Flodden Field.

Mr. Gibson then passes on to some remarkable instances of longevity from the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll, the record of the celebrated cause in the reign of Richard II., when, among the noble and knightly deponents who gave evidence in the following year, 1386, were:

Sir John Sully, Knight of the Garter and a distinguished soldier of the cross, who had served for eighty years, was then, by his own account, 105 years of age, and who is supposed to have died in his 108th year.

But, more remarkable, John Thirlwall, an esquire of an ancient Northumbrian house, deposes to what he heard from his father, who died forty-four years before, at the age of 145.

Not far from Thirlwall Castle, at Irthington, Mr. B. Gibson has seen the register of the burial of Robert Bowman, one of the most remarkable of the long-lived yeomen of that parish, who died in the year 1823, at the age of 118.

Mr. John Bruce, F.S.A., has also illustrated our subject by the following curious evidence. Lettice, Countess of Leicester, was born in 1539 or ’40, and was consequently 7 years old at the death of Henry VIII. She may very well have had a recollection of the bluff monarch, who cut off the head of her great-aunt, Anne Boleyn. She was thrice married, and had seen six English sovereigns, or seven if Philip be counted; her faculties were unimpaired at 85; and until a year or two of her death, on Christmas-day 1634, at the age of 94, she “could yet walk a mile of a morning.” Lettice was one of a long-lived race: her father lived till 1596; two of her brothers attained the ages of 86 and 99.

There is nothing (says Mr. Bruce) incredible, or even very extraordinary, in Lettice’s age; but even her years will produce curious results if applied to the subject of possible transmission of knowledge through few links. I will give one example: “Dr. Johnson, who was born in 1709, might have known a person who had seen the Countess Lettice. If there are not now (1857), there were amongst us within the last three or four years, persons who knew Dr. Johnson. There might, therefore, be only two links between ourselves and the Countess Lettice, who saw Henry VIII.”[38]

Mr. John Pavin Philips writes from Haverfordwest: “A friend of mine, now (1857) in his 80th year, knew an old woman resident in his parish who remembered her grandmother, who saw Cromwell when he was in Pembrokeshire, in 1648. I myself, when a student in Edinburgh in 1837, knew a centenarian lady, named Butler, who well recollected being taken by her mother to witness the public entry of Prince Charles Edward into the city in 1745.” And in Haverfordwest might be seen daily walking, in 1857, in perfect health, a man who was born four years previous to the death of George II.[39]

Mary Yates, of Shiffnal, Salop, who died 1776, aged 128, well remembered walking to view the ruins of the Great Fire of London, 1666.

In the _News Letter_ of June 1st, 1724, Bodl. Mss., Rawl. C., it is related, that on the King’s birthday, as the nobility and others of distinction passed through Pall Mall to Court at St. James’s, there sat in the street one Elinor Stuart, being 124 years old. She had kept a linen-shop at Kendal, and had nine children living at the time King Charles I. was beheaded, and was undone by adhering to the royal cause. “She is reckoned,” says the account (Jane Skrimshaw, who was now dead, being 128), “the oldest woman in London.”[40]

Margaret Mapps, of Eaton, near Leominster, who died in 1800, aged 109, had so retentive a memory, that to her last hours she could relate many incidents which she had witnessed in the reign of Queen Anne.

In 1858 died Mrs. Milward, of Blackheath, at the age of 102. She was, consequently, born four years previous to the accession of George III.; she saw the separation of the American colonies from the mother country; the three French revolutions, and the great war with France; she well remembered the London riots of 1780, and was placed in some jeopardy in Hyde-park in one of the incidents.

Jane Forrester, of Cumberland, is stated in the _Public Advertiser_, March 9th, 1766, as then living in her 138th year: she remembered Cromwell’s siege of Carlisle, in 1646; and in 1762 she gave evidence in a Chancery-suit of an estate having been enjoyed by the ancestors of the then heir 101 years.

One Evans, of Spitalfields, who died 1780, is stated to have reached the age of 139 years: he remembered the execution of Charles I., at which time he was 7 years old.

In the London newspapers of November 7th, 1788, is recorded the celebration of the centenary of the Revolution, at which was present a person who remembered that glorious event; he was 112 years old, and belonged to the French Hospital, Old Street-road, where were then ten persons whose ages together were 1000 years.

In 1826 there died at Corby, near Carlisle, aged 102, one Joseph Liddle, a shoemaker, who was at work in his shop, in the market-place of Carlisle, when the Scotch rebels entered the town, in 1745; he was very fond of horticulture, and, with little help, kept in order a large garden nearly until the day of his death.

Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died on December 18th, 1855, aged 96, among many accomplishments possessed a most retentive memory; and his sweep of recollections was very wide.

He remembered when one of the Rebels’ heads remained on Temple Bar;
when schoolboys chased butterflies in the fields in cocked hats;
when gentlemen universally wore wigs and swords; when Ranelagh was
in all its glory, and ladies going thither had head-dresses so
preposterously high that they had to sit on stools placed in the
bottom of the coach; when Garrick crowded the theatre, Reynolds
crowded the lecture-room, and Johnson crowded the club; he had heard
the Duke of York relate how he and his brother George, when young
men, were robbed by footpads on Hay-hill, Berkeley-street; he had
shaken hands with John Wilkes, dined with Lafayette, Condorcet, &c.
at Paris, before the great Revolution began, and been present at
Warren Hastings’ trial in Westminster Hall; he had seen Lady
Hamilton go through her “attitudes” before the Prince of Wales, and
Lord Nelson spin a teetotum with his _one_ hand for the amusement of
children.—_R. Carruthers._

Mr. Peter Cunningham noted, a few days after the death of our Poet:
“When Rogers made his appearance as a poet, Lord Byron was
unborn—and Byron has been dead thirty-one years! When Percy Bysshe
Shelley was born, Rogers was in his 30th year—and Shelley has been
dead nearly thirty-four years! When Keats was born, _The Pleasures
of Memory_ was looked upon as a standard poem—and Keats has been
dead thirty-five years! When this century commenced, the man who
died but yesterday, and in the latter half too of the century, had
already numbered as many years as Burns and Byron had numbered when
they died. Mr. Rogers was born before the following English poets:
Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Moore, Campbell,
Bloomfield, Cunningham, Hogg, James Montgomery, Shelley, Keats,
Wilson, Tom Hood, Kirk White, Lamb, Joanna Baillie, Felicia Hemans,
L. E. L.; and he outlived them all.”

On April 24th, 1858, died Mr. James Nolan, at Auchindrane, Carlow, Ireland, aged 115 years and 9 months. There is something more interesting than his being the oldest subject of her Majesty, who had lived in the reigns of five sovereigns of England; and no doubt it is curious to be carried back by two lives—Mr. Nolan and his father—to the reign of Charles II., and almost to the time of Cromwell.

Here is a remarkable instance: Commander Pickernell, R.N., who died April 20th, 1859, aged 87, knew well in his youth a man who was a soldier encamped on Hounslowheath at the time of the Revolution in 1688. This same man played an instrument in the band at Queen Anne’s coronation, and served through Marlborough’s wars; in his old age he returned to the neighbourhood of his native place, Whitby, where he died, considerably over a century, when Commander Pickernell was a boy about 7 or 8 years old.[41]

The venerable President of Magdalen College, Oxford, Dr. Routh, who died 1855, in his hundredth year, brought up old memories of times and men long passed away. Dr. Routh had known Dr. Theophilus Lee, the contemporary of Addison; had seen Dr. Johnson “in his brown wig scrambling up the steps of University College;” and had been told by a lady of her aunt who had been present when Charles II. walked round the parks at Oxford.

Dr. Routh had maintained an immediate and personal connexion with the University of Oxford for upwards of 80 years; and his long life supplied many instructive links between the present and the past. He was born in the reign of King George II., before the beginning of the Seven Years’ War; before India was conquered by Clive, or Canada by Wolfe; before the United States ever dreamt of independence; and before Pitt had impressed the greatness of his own character on the policy of Britain. The life of this college student comprehended three most important periods in the history of the world. Martin Routh saw the last years of the old state of society which introduced the political deluge; he saw the deluge itself—the great French Revolution, with all its catastrophes of thrones and opinions; and he lived to see the more stirring but not less striking changes which forty years of peace had engendered. It is therefore not a little curious to read of such a man, that the times on which his thoughts chiefly dwelt were those of the Stuarts; which is not, however, altogether surprising, as he might himself have shaken hands with the Pretender. This Prince did not die till young Routh was ten years of age; so that, if accident had put the chance in his way, he might easily have had an interview with the representative of James II.[42] What an interval was there between this epoch and Dr. Routh sitting for a photograph on his hundredth birthday!

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Footnote 38:

See _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, Nos. 51 and 53.

Footnote 39:

Ibid. No. 58.

Footnote 40:

W. D. Macray; _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 23.

Footnote 41:

_Notes and Queries_, 2d series, No. 169.

Footnote 42:

Condensed from the _Times_ journal.

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LONGEVITY IN FAMILIES.

The long life of different members of the same family is remarkable. In 1836, Mrs. H. P., residing near the Edgeware-road, attained her 103d year: she had three sisters,—one 107, another 105; and the other, who died about 1834, 100.

Mr. Bailey records the death of Widow Stephenson, of Wolverton, Durham, in 1816, aged 104: her mother lived to be 106, two sisters 106 and 107, and a brother 97; making an aggregate of 519 years as the age of these five relatives.

Edward Simon, 81 years a dock-labourer in Liverpool, died 1821, aged 101: his mother lived to 103; his father 101; and a brother 104.

Gilbert Wakefield states that his wife’s great-grandfather and great-grandmother’s matrimonial connexion lasted seventy-five years: they died nearly at the same time, she at the age of 98, he at the age of 108. He was out hunting a short time before his death. His portrait is in the hall of Mr. Legh, of Lyme.

Mary Tench, of Cromlin, Ireland, who died 1790, aged 100, was of aged parents; her father attained 104, and her mother 96; her uncle reached 110 and she left two sisters, whose aggregate ages made 170.

In the year 1811, within four miles of the house at Alderbury formerly occupied by Parr, there died, in the month of September, four persons, whose ages were 97, 80, 96, and 97. There were then living in the neighbourhood a man aged 100, and two others of 90.

The Costello family, county Kilkenny, lived to very great ages. On June 12, 1824, died Mary Costello, aged 102; her mother died at precisely the same age; her grandmother at 120; her great-grandmother exceeded 125: long before her death, she had to be rocked in a cradle, like an infant. Mary Costello’s brother lived beyond 100 years; and when 90, cut down half an acre of grass in a day.[43]

In Appleby churchyard is a tombstone in memory of three persons named Hall: the grandfather died in 1716, aged 109, and the father aged 86; and the son died in 1821, aged 106. “So that the father had seen a man (his father) who saw James I., and also a man (his son) who saw me, or might have done so.”[44]

The Countess of Mornington, who died in 1831, attained the age of 90: her eldest son, the Marquis Wellesley, ennobled for his administration in India, reached 82; his brother, Lord Maryborough, 83; Lady Maryborough, 91; and their brother, the Great Duke of Wellington, 83. We possess a small portrait of Lady Mary Irvine, aunt to Lady Maryborough, painted in her 82d year; the face is without a wrinkle, but of _riant_ beauty.

The London bankers, Joseph and William Joseph Denison, exceeded 80; and the sister of the latter, Dowager Marchioness of Conyngham, 90.

Lady Blakiston, died, November 1862, in her 102d year; and her eldest son, Sir Matthew Blakiston, died December following, in his 82d year.

“On 8th April 1860, Mr. S. Cronesberry died at Farmer’s Bridge, aged 99. His grandfather died in 97th year; his father died in 97th year; his mother in 98th year.”[45]

Archibald, 9th Earl of Dundonald, died 1831, aged 83; and his son, 10th Earl, 1860, reached 82: both in the naval service, and distinguished by their scientific attainments.

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Footnote 43:

_Dublin Warder_, 1824.

Footnote 44:

Letter of Baron Alderson, in his _Life_, by his Son, date Feb. 19,
1833.

Footnote 45:

_Kilkenny Moderator._

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FEMALE LONGEVITY.

One of the most celebrated personages in the history of Female Longevity is the Countess of Desmond, who is usually said to have died early in the 17th century, aged 140 years. Bacon, in his _Natural History_, describes her as “the old Countess of Desmond, who lived till she was sevenscore years old, that she did _dentire_ (produce teeth) twice or thrice.” Sir Walter Raleigh, in his _History of the World_, says: “I myself _knew_ the old Countess of Desmond of Inchiquin, in Munster, who lived in the year 1589, and many years since, who was married in Edward IV.’s time, and held her jointure from all the Earls of Desmond since then: and that this is true, all the noblemen and gentlemen in Munster can witness.”[46] Sir William Temple was told by Robert Earl of Leicester of the Countess married in Edward IV.’s time, “and who lived far in King James’s reign, and was counted to have died some years above 140.” There has been much controversy respecting the portraits of this lady which are said to exist: that in the possession of the Knight of Kerry, and engraved in 1806, is reputed authentic; and after much discussion, the Countess has been identified as Katharine, second wife of Thomas 12th Earl of Desmond, who died in 1534. Fynes Morrison, the traveller, who was in Ireland from 1599 to 1603, tells of the Countess living to the age of about 140 years; of her walking four or five miles weekly to the market-town in her last years; and of her death by falling out of a tree which she had climbed to gather nuts. There is a tradition which might be true, of her having danced at Court with the Duke of Gloucester (Richard III.), of whom she affirmed that he was the handsomest man in the room, except his brother Edward, and was very well made.[47]

Of Margaret Patten, stated to have died 136 and 138 years old, a curious portrait was found at Glasgow, amongst some family papers, in 1853. She was born in the parish of Locknugh, near Paisley, in Scotland, and is described beneath the portrait as “now living in the workhouse of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, aged 138.” And in the Boardroom of St. Margaret’s workhouse is another portrait of Margaret (there stated to be 136), the gift of the overseers of the parish in 1737. The old woman was buried in the burial-ground of the Broadway church, now Christ-church, Westminster, where a stone is inscribed, “Near this place lieth Margaret Patten, who died June 26, 1739, in the Parish Workhouse, aged 136.” “She was brought to England to prepare Scotch broth for King James II.; but owing to the abdication of that monarch, fell into poverty, and died in St. Margaret’s workhouse. Her body was followed to the grave by the parochial authorities and many of the principal inhabitants, while the children sung a hymn before it reached its last resting-place.”[48]

In the Dublin Exhibition of 1853 was a print with this inscription: “Mary Gore, born at Cottonwith in Yorkshire, A.D. 1582; lived upwards of one hundred years in Ireland, and died in Dublin, aged 145 years. This print was done from a picture _taken_ (the word is torn off) when she was one hundred and forty-three. Vanluych _pinxit_, T. Chambers _del._”[49]

The following instances of long widowhoods are interesting: the widow of Thomas, second Lord Lyttleton, who died in 1779, survived his lordship in a state of widowhood sixty-one years, dying in 1840, aged 97.

The widow of David Garrick died in 1822, in the same house, on the Adelphi-terrace, wherein her celebrated husband died forty-three years previously. We remember a small etching of the old lady appearing in the print-shops just after her death, portraying her characteristic dignified deportment. Among the legacies bequeathed to her husband’s family was a service of pewter used by him when a bachelor, and having the name of Garrick engraven on it.

The widow of Charles James Fox, the statesman, died in 1842, aged 96, having survived her husband thirty-six years.

Amelia Opie, the amiable novelist, died in 1853, in her 85th year, having survived her husband, the painter, forty-six years. He painted a remarkable picture of Mrs. Opie,—two portraits, full-face and profile, upon the same canvas; they are said to be faithful likenesses.

Some years since, writes the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, “we beheld the strange sight of an old woman, aged 102, bent double, crooning over the fire, and nursing in her lap an infant a few days old. The infant was the grandchild of the old woman’s grandchild. The only remarkable circumstance in the veteran’s history was, that she had nursed Wordsworth in his infancy. She had lived the greater part of her life in Westmoreland, near the poet’s residence, and there her descendants had been chiefly born and lived.”

Here are a few instances of women of remarkable talent attaining great ages:

Caroline Lucretia Herschel, who discovered seven comets, and passed years of nights as amanuensis to her brother, Sir William Herschel, in his astronomical labours, attained the age of 97, with her intellect clear, and princes and philosophers alike striving to do her honour.

Miss Linwood, whose Needlework Pictures were exhibited nearly sixty years, died in 1844, at the age of 90. No needlework of ancient or modern times has ever surpassed these productions. The collection consisted of sixty-four pictures, mostly of large or gallery size; the finest work, from the “Salvator Mundi,” by Carlo Dolci, was bequeathed by Miss Linwood to Queen Victoria; for this picture 3000 guineas had been refused.