We pray in the Litany to be delivered from sudden death. Any death is to be deprecated which should find us unprepared: but as a temporal calamity with more reason might we pray to be spared from the misery of an infirm old age. It was once my fortune to see a frightful instance of extreme longevity,—a woman who was nearly in her hundredth year. Her sight was greatly decayed, though not lost; it was very difficult to make her hear, and not easy then to make her understand what was said, though when her torpid intellect was awakened she was, legally, of sane mind. She was unable to walk, or to assist herself in any way. Her neck hung in such wrinkles that it might almost be likened to a turkey's; and the skin of her face and of her arms was cleft like the bark of an oak, as rough, and almost of as dark a colour. In this condition, without any apparent suffering, she passed her time in a state between sleeping and waking, fortunate that she could thus beguile the wearisomeness of such an existence.
Instances of this kind are much rarer in Europe than in tropical climates. Negresses in the West Indies sometimes attain an age which is seldom ascertained because it is far beyond living memory. They outlive all voluntary power, and their descendants of the third or fourth generation carry them out of their cabins into the open air, and lay them, like logs, as the season may require, in the sunshine, or in the shade. Methinks if Mecænas had seen such an object, he would have composed a palinode to those verses in which he has perpetuated his most pitiable love for life. A woman in New Hampshire, North America, had reached the miserable age of 102, when one day as some people were visiting her, the bell tolled for a funeral; she burst into tears and said “Oh when will the bell toll for me! It seems as if it never would toll for me! I am afraid that I shall never die!” This reminds me that I have either read, or heard, an affecting story of a poor old woman in England,—very old, and very poor,—who retained her senses long after the body had become a weary burden; she too when she heard the bell toll for a funeral used to weep, and say she was afraid God had forgotten her! Poor creature, ignorantly as she spake, she had not forgotten Him; and such impatience will not be accounted to her for a sin.
These are extreme cases, as rare as they are mournful. Life indeed is long enough for what we have to suffer, as well as what we have to learn; but it was wisely said by an old Scottish Minister (I wish I knew his name, for this saying ought to have immortalized it,) “Time is short; and if your cross is heavy you have not far to carry it.”
Chi ha travaglio, in pace il porti:
Dolce è Dio, se il mondo è amaro.
Sappia l'uom, che al Cielo è caro;
Abbia fede, è aura conforti.1
Were the term shorter it would not suffice for the developement of those moral qualities which belong peculiarly to the latter stage of life; nor could the wholesome influence which age exercises over the young in every country where manners are not so thoroughly corrupted as to threaten the dissolution of society, be in any other manner supplied.
1 MAGGI.
“Il me semble que le mal physique attendrit autant que le mal moral endurcit le cœur,” said Lord Chesterfield, when he was growing old, and suffering under the infirmities of a broken constitution. Affliction in its lightest form, with the aid of time, had brought his heart into this wholesome state.
O figliuol' d'Adam, grida Natura,
Onde i tormenti? Io vi farà tranquilli,
Se voi non rebellate alla mia legge.2
There is indeed a tranquillity which Nature brings with it as duly toward the close of life, as it induces sleep at the close of day. We may resist the salutary influence in both cases, and too often it is resisted, at the cost of health in the one, and at a still dearer cost in the other: but if we do this, we do it wilfully, the resistance is our own act and deed,—it is our own error, our own fault, our sin, and we must abide the consequences.
2 CHIABRERA.