--everybody to his own taste!--but I should like to say that for
those whose Latin has become only a faint perfume of attar of roses,
like that which is said to cling faintly to one of the desks of Marie
Antoinette at Versailles, the translations of our dear Horatius by Lord
Lytton is a very precious aid to a knowledge of one of the most charming
and most wise of pagan poets.

Horace says:

Postumus, Postumus, the years glide by us,
Alas! no piety delays the wrinkles,
Nor old age imminent,
Nor the indomitable hand of Death.

We might have, in spite of the awful examples of Mr. Wells and the other
preachers, who ought to confine themselves to finer things, desired that
Horace should have gone further and told us what kind of books we ought
to read in our old age. His choice was naturally limited; it was
impossible for him to buy a book every week, or every month. The
publishers were not so active in those days. But he might have indicated
the kind of book that old age might read, in order to renew its youth. I
have tried "Robinson Crusoe,"--the unequalled--and "Swiss Family
Robinson"; but they seem too grown up for me now. I have taken to "King
Solomon's Mines" and "Treasure Island" and that perfect gem of
excitement and illusion, "The Mutineers," by Charles Boardman Hawes. I
read it, and I'm young again. I trust that some enterprising bookseller
will unblushingly compile a library for the old, and begin it with "The
Mutineers!" The main difficulty with the Old or the Near Old is that the
fear of shocking the Young makes them such hypocrites. They pretend that
they like Mr. Wells and the other preachers; they express intense
interest in new and ponderous books, in the presence of Youth--when they
ought to yawn frankly and bury themselves in romances. But if the Old
really want to save their faces, and at the same time enjoy glimpses of
that fountain of youth which we long for at every age, let them acquire
two books--Clifford Smyth's "The Gilded Man" and "The Quest of El
Dorado," by Dr. J. A. Zahm, whose _nom de plume_ was H. J. Mozans. There
you have the real stuff. Together, these two books are a combination of
just what the Old need to found dreams on. If a man does not smoke he
cannot dream with any facility when he grows old; and if he has not
possessed himself of these two volumes, he cannot have acquired that
basis for dreams which the energetic Aged greatly need. "The Gilded Man"
is fran