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!