Une raison essentielle, says the Epicurean Saint Evremond, qui nous oblige à nous retirer quand nous sommes vieux, c'est qu'il faut prevenir le ridicule où l'age nous fait tomber presque toujours. And in another place he says, certes le plus honnéte-homme dont personne n'a besoin, a de la peine a s'exempter du ridicule en vieillissant. This was the opinion of a courtier, a sensualist, and a Frenchman.
I cannot more appositely conclude this chapter than by a quotation ascribed, whether truly or not, to St. Bernard. Maledictum caput canum et cor vanum, caput tremulum et cor emulum, canities in vertice et pernicies in mente: facies rugosa et lingua nugosa, cutis sicca et fides ficta; visus caligans et caritas claudicans; labium pendens et dens detrahens; virtus debilis et vita flebilis; dies uberes et fructus steriles, amici multi, et actus stulti.
CHAPTER CLXXXIV.
FURTHER OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING OLD AGE. BISHOP REYNOLDS. OPINION OF THE DOCTOR CONCERNING BEASTS AND MEN. M. DE CUSTINE. THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US. WORDSWORTH. SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
In these reflections, which are of a serious, and somewhat of a melancholy cast, it is best to indulge; because it is always of use to be serious, and not unprofitable sometimes to be melancholy.
FREEMAN'S SERMONS.
“As usurers,” says Bishop Reynolds, “before the whole debt is paid, do fetch away some good parts of it for the loan, so before the debt of death be paid by the whole body, old age doth by little and little, take away sometimes one sense sometimes another, this year one limb, the next another; and causeth a man as it were to die daily. No one can dispel the clouds and sorrows of old age, but Christ who is the sun of righteousness and the bright morning star.”