Scott, four years before his death. party suddenly exclaimed, 'Look! Look! See the lark rising!' I looked up with the rest. There was the bright blue sky, but not a speck upon it which my eyes could distinguish. Again, one called out, 'Hark! Hark! Hear him singing!' I listened, but not a sound reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? Those that look out of the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of music are brought low. Was I never again to see or hear the soaring songster at Heaven's Gate?" Donald MacLeod describes the visit of Walter Scott to London, four years before his death. The decay of his powers was already very apparent. He spent six weeks with the Lockharts and with his son Charles. Here were old friends yet to welcome him, and quiet dinners with the king and others. He goes about, one day to hear Coleridge discourse on the Samothracian Mysteries, another day to sit to the artist Northcote : again to exchange a lock of his white hair with a pretty girl for a kiss, and once to hear a lady sing one of his own songs from the Pirate : "Farewell, farewell, the voice you hear Has left its last soft tones with you, He liked the music, and whispered to Lockhart, "Capital words: whose are they? Byron's, I suppose, but I don't remember them." When told that they were his own, he seemed pleased for an instant, but the pleasure vanished, and he said, "You have distressed me. If mem- Memory ory goes, all is gone with me, for that was always my strong point." scattering her poppy. Oblivion was gone. failing. The wonder is that we should care so much to remain here- those of us that have felt successively the touches of decay. Dim eyes, dull ears, lost teeth, flaccid muscles, trembling nerves, uncertain locomotion, impaired memory, remind us of what we were, and warn us of what we will be if we linger. Fading, failing, is announced Fading, in every function and faculty. We have had our little day. We did our poor best in the fight that is over. We have known the inspiration of effort and the delights of achievement. We have received about all we deserved. Poor or rich, we have had our joys and our anxieties. Our sons are fairly on the way. We have built houses for them, to be superseded or remodeled. We are at the tail of the procession. It is easy to see that society has arranged to In the way of progress. do without us. Our notions are obsolete or superannuated. They call us names when we express them. We hang our faces on the wall, to be turned to it in time, and forgotten. Our reason is called obstinacy. We are in the way of progress, and a hindrance to growth. Our little savings are anticipated capital. Life insurance has made our deaths interesting. We cling to old clothes, old customs, old associations, and acquired habits, and are laughed at by those who will do the same. Our minds have been traveled over till those who are familiar with us take for granted they know them better than we know them ourselves. When we open our mouths they assume to know precisely what we mean to say. The point of our talk is anticipated and made easy. Circumspection is imbecility, experience distrust. Our signs of things are invisibilities, which are revealed only to ourselves by introspection and the gravest reflection. Why should Why should we want to stay, where we are not wanted, and can do little good, where impulse and inexperience are to govern? Experience is for philosophers, and philosophy is not less hateful than moderation. To our tombs we should go we want to stay? as consciously and uncomplainingly as we go to our beds. exertion "The old," says Goethe, "lose one of the greatest privileges of man, they are no longer judged by their contemporaries." Northcote said, "What takes off the edge and stimulus of exertion in old age, stimulus of is those who were our competitors in taken off. early life, whom we wished to excel or whose good opinion we were most anxious about, are gone, and have left us in a manner by ourselves, in a sort of new world, where we know and are as little known as on entering a strange country. Our ambition is cold with the ashes of those whom we feared or loved." "As for envy," said Plutarch, "which is the greatest evil attending the management of public affairs, it least attacks old age. For dogs indeed, as Heraclitus has it, bark at a stranger whom they do not know; and envy opposes him who is a beginner on the very steps of the tribune, hindering his access, but she Envy reconmeekly bears an accustomed and familiar glory, and not churlishly or with difficulty. Wherefore some resemble envy to smoke; for it arises thick at first, when the fire begins to burn; but when the flame grows clear, it vanishes away." ciled. A quaint passage. It is a maxim of La Rochefoucauld's that "Old men delight in giving good advice, as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer set bad examples." Which reminds one of a passage in quaint old Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster: "It is a notable tale that old Sir Roger Chamloe, sometime chief justice, would tell of himself. When he was Ancient in inn of court, certain young gentlemen were brought before him to be corrected for certain misorders; and one of the lustiest said: 'Sir, we be young gentlemen; and wise men before we have proved all fashions, and yet those have done well.' This they said because it was well known Sir Roger had been a good fellow in his youth. But he answered them very wisely. deed,' saith he, 'in youth I was as you are now; and I had twelve fellows like unto myself, but not one of them came to a good end. And therefore, follow not my Counsel in example in youth, but follow my counsel in age, if ever ye think to come to this place, or to these years, that I am come unto; less you meet either with poverty or Tyburn in the way." age. "In Cato the Elder begged of old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old |