I had had, and vividly enjoyed an entire life, according to the measure that is meted out to many, perhaps I may say to most men. But I felt myself ready for another! And—thanks this time also to a woman—I have had another, in no wise less happy, in some respects, as less chequered by sorrows—more happy than the first! I am in better health too, having outgrown apparently several of the maladies which young people are subject to!
Of this second life I am not now going to tell my readers anything. "What I remember" of my first life may be, and I hope has been, told frankly without giving offence or annoyance to any human being. I don't know that the telling of the story of my second life would necessarily lead me to say anything which could hurt anybody. But mixed up as its incidents and interests and associations have been with a great multitude of men and women still living and moving and talking and writing round about me, I should not feel myself so comfortably at liberty to write whatever offered itself to my memory.
Ten years hence, perhaps ("Please God, the public lives!" as a speculative showman said), I may tell the reader, if he cares to hear it, the story of my second life. For the present we will break off here.
But not without some words of parting kindness—and shall we say, wisdom!—from an old man to readers, most of whom probably might be his sons, and many doubtless his grandsons.
Especially, my young friends, don't pay overmuch attention to what the Psalmist says about "the years of man." I knew dans le temps a fine old octo-and-nearly-nonogenarian, one Graberg de Hemsö, a Swede (a man with a singular history, who passed ten years of his early life in the British navy, and was, when I knew him, librarian at the Pitti Palace in Florence), who used to complain of the Florentine doctors that "Dey doosen't know what de nordern constitooshions is!" and I take it the same may be said of the Psalmist. The years beyond three score and ten need not be all sorrow and trouble. Depend upon it kindly nature—prudens, as that jolly fellow, fine gentleman, and true philosopher, Horace, says in a similar connection—kindly nature knows how to make the closing decade of life every whit as delightful as any of the preceding, if only you don't baulk her purposes. Don't weigh down your souls, and pin your particles of divine essence to earth by your yesterday's vices; be sure that when you cannot jump over the chairs so featly as you can now, you will not want to do so; tell the girls with genial old Anacreon, when the time comes, that whether the hairs on your forehead be many or few, you know not, but do know well that it behoves an old man to be cheery in proportion to the propinquity of his exit, and go on your way rejoicing through this beautiful world, which not even the Radicals have quite spoilt yet.
And so à rivederci—au revoir—auf Wiedersehn—why have we no
English equivalent better than "Here's to our next pleasant meeting!"
INDEX.
A.
Abbey, Reading, Mary Mitford's project concerning
Aberdeen, Lord, and Lord Cowley
Abrams, the Misses
Absolute, Sir A., my representation of
Ackland, Captain
Adam, Sir Frederick
Adam the forger, Dante's
Adams, John Quincy, Grattan on
Affinities Elective
Age not counted by years
Aladdin's lamp, G. Eliot wishes for
Albani, Margherita
Albèri, Signor
Albertazzi in 1840
Alinari, photographer at Florence
All the Year Round, contributions to
American lady at Tuileries
Americans at the Pitti Palace
anecdote of
meeting Lewes at an
America, my brother's book on
criticised by Lewes
Irish in, Grattan on
Amiens, excursion to
Ampère, his éloge at the Academy by Arago
Amphytrion, Venice as
Anacreon on old age
Antagonism with G. Eliot, subject of
Antagonist, G. Eliot as an
Antiboini, the
Antiques, modern, in Our Village
Antonelli, Cardinal
Apennines, Grand Duke crossing the
figure representing the, by Michael Angelo
scenery among the
Apoplexy, man dying of, anecdote of
Appony, Comte d', his receptions in Paris
April fool, Grattan an
Arago, M., at the Academy
Archduchesses, sweetness of
Archduchess Sophie
Arezzo, marshes near
Pulszky at
G. Eliot wishes to see
Aristotle's Natural Science
Army, Tuscan attitude of at the Revolution
Arnaldo da Brescia, Niccolini's
Arno river in flood
the
Articulation, George Eliot's
Ashley, Lord, letter from
Aspirates, Landor used to drop them
Aspirations, early
Athenaeum, my wife's letters in the
Atlantic Monthly on Landor
Aubrey, Miss
Aumale, Duke of
Aunt, Dante's
Aural circulation, Lewes on
Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Browning's
Austen, Miss, Mary Mitford's idol
Austin, Alfred
Austrian troops in Florence
officers, anecdote of
Austria, Mary Mitford on
Napoleon III.'s negotiations with
Autobiography, G. Eliot on
Autograph collectors
Autolycus, his song
Auvergne, pedestrianising in
dialect of
Aylmer, Admiral
Lord
Azeglio d'Massimo, anecdote of