“When Wilkie was in the Escurial,” says Southey, “looking at Titian’s famous picture of the Last Supper in the refectory there, an old Jeronymite monk said to him, ‘I have sat daily in sight of that picture for now nearly threescore years; during that time my companions have dropped off one after another—all who were my seniors, all who were my cotemporaries, and many or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged. I look at them, till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows.’ ”
I have stated that there is no reason known to us why Death should always “round the sum of life.” Up to a certain point of their duration, varying in each separate set of instances, and in the comparison of extremes varying prodigiously, the vegetable and animal organisms not only sustain themselves, but expand and develop themselves, grow and increase, enjoying a better and better life, advancing and progressive. Wherefore is it that at this period all progress is completely arrested; that thenceforward they waste, deteriorate and fail? Why should they thus decline and decay with unerring uniformity upon their attaining their highest perfection, their most intense activity? This ultimate law is equally mysterious and inexorable. It is true the Sacred Writings tell us of Enoch, “whom God took and he was not;” and of Elijah, who was transported through the upper air in a chariot of fire; and of Melchisedek, the most extraordinary personage whose name is recorded, “without father, without mother, without descent: having neither beginning of days, nor end of life.” We read the history without conceiving the faintest hope from these exceptions to the universal rule. Yet our fancy has always exulted in visionary evasions of it, by forging for ourselves creations of immortal maturity, youth and beauty, residing in Elysian fields of unfading spring, amidst the fruition of perpetual vigor. We would drink, in imagination, of the sparkling fountain of rejuvenescence; nay, boldly dare the terror of Medea’s caldron. We echo, in every despairing heart, the ejaculation of the expiring Wolcott, “Bring back my youth!”
Reflection, however, cannot fail to reconcile us to our ruthless destiny. There is another law of our being, not less unrelenting, whose yoke is even harsher and more intolerable, from whose pressure Death alone can relieve us, and in comparison with which the absolute certainty of dying becomes a glorious blessing. Of whatever else we may remain ignorant, each of us, for himself, comes to feel, realize and know unequivocally that all his capacities, both of action and enjoyment, are transient and tend to pass away; and when our thirst is satiated, we turn disgusted from the bitter lees of the once fragrant and sparkling cup. I am aware of Parnell’s offered analogy—
“The tree of deepest root is found
Unwilling most to leave the ground;”
and of Rush’s notion, who imputes to the aged such an augmenting love of life that he is at a loss to account for it, and suggests, quaintly enough, that it may depend upon custom, the great moulder of our desires and propensities; and that the infirm and decrepit “love to live on because they have acquired a habit of living.” His assumption is wrong in point of fact. He loses sight of the important principle that Old Age is a relative term, and that one man may be more superannuated, farther advanced in natural decay at sixty, than another at one hundred years. Parr might well rejoice at being alive, and exult in the prospect of continuing to live, at one hundred and thirty, being capable, as is affirmed, even of the enjoyment of sexual life at that age; but he who has had his “three sufficient warnings,” who is deaf, lame and blind; who, like the monk of the Escurial, has lost all his cotemporaries, and is condemned to hopeless solitude, and oppressed with the consciousness of dependence and imbecility, must look on Death not as a curse, but a refuge. Of one hundred and thirty-three suicides occurring in Geneva from 1825 to 1834, more than half were above fifty years of age; thirty-four, from fifty to sixty; nineteen, from sixty to seventy; nine, from seventy to eighty; three, from eighty to ninety; in all sixty-five. The mean term of life in that city being about thirty-five to forty, this bears an immense proportion to the actual population above fifty, and exhibits forcibly an opposite condition of feeling to that alleged by Rush, a weariness of living, a desire to die, rather than an anxiety, or even willingness to live.
I once knew an old man of about one hundred and four who retained many of his faculties. He could read ordinary print without glasses, walked firmly, rode well, and could even leap with some agility. When I last parted with him, I wished him twenty years more; upon which he grasped my hand closely, and declared he would not let me go until I had retracted or reversed the prayer.
Strolling with my venerable and esteemed colleague, Prof. Stephen Elliott, one afternoon, through a field on the banks of the river Ashley, we came upon a negro basking in the sun, the most ancient-looking personage I have ever seen. Our attempts, with his aid, to calculate his age, were of course conjectural; but we were satisfied that he was far above one hundred. Bald, toothless, nearly blind, bent almost horizontally, and scarcely capable of locomotion, he was absolutely alone in the world, living by permission upon a place, from which the generation to which his master and fellow-servants belonged had long since disappeared. He expressed many an earnest wish for death, and declared, emphatically, that he “was afraid God Almighty had forgotten him.”
We cannot wonder, then, that the ancients should believe, “Whom the gods love, die young,” and are ready to say with Southey, himself, subsequently, like poor Swift, a melancholy example of the truth of his poetical exclamation,
“They who reach