epends a great deal on circumstances, which are hardly
the same in any two cases. Some writers have said that a man is old at
forty-five, others have set down seventy as the normal standard. Dr.
John Gardner, who has written on "Longevity," remarks: "Long
observation has convinced me that sixty-three is an age at which the
majority of persons may be termed old, and as a general rule we may
adopt this as the epoch of the commencing decline of life."

Suppose then we agree to call no man old till he is past sixty-three.
Let us set down the names of some of the illustrious people of the
world who have prolonged their days of usefulness after that age. We
shall make a table of them, and begin it with those who have died at
seventy,--that is to say, with those in whom the springs of life have
not stood still till they have had at least seven years of old age. It
will be found, however, to be far from exhaustive, and every reader
may find pleasure in adding to it from his own stock of information:

_Age at Death._

70--Columbus; Lord Chatham; Petrarch; Copernicus; Spallanzani;
Boerhaave; Gall.
71--Linnaeus.
72--Charlemagne; Samuel Richardson; Allan Ramsey; John Locke;
Necker.
73--Charles Darwin; Thorwaldsen.
74--Handel; Frederick the Great; Dr. Jenner.
75--Haydn; Dugald Stewart.
76--Bossuet.
77--Thomas Telford; Sir Joseph Banks; Lord Beaconsfield.
78--Galileo; Corneille.
79--William Harvey; Robert Stevenson; Henry Cavendish.
80--Plato; Wordsworth; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Kant; Thiers; William
Cullen.
81--Buffon; Edward Young; Sir Edward Coke; Lord Palmerston.
82--Arnauld.
83--Wellington; Goethe; Victor Hugo.
84--Voltaire; Talleyrand; Sir William Herschel.
85--Cato the Wise; Newton; Benj. Franklin; Jeremy Bentham.
86--Earl Russell; Edmund Halley; Carlyle.
88--John Wesley.
89--Michael Angelo.
90--Sophocles.
99--Titian.
100--Fontenelle.

It may be said that they were exceptional in living so long, but if
what the best authorities say be true, the exceptions ought to be the
people who died young, and not those who prolong their lives and carry
on their work till they are old. Few of us may find ourselves, like
Lord Palmerston, in our greatest vigor at seventy, or be able, like
Thiers, to rule France at eighty, or have any spirit for playing the
author, like Goethe and Victor Hugo, when over eighty; o