e. Thackeray continually expressed the same feeling. He
reverts to the merry old time when George the Third was king. He looks
back with a regretful mind to his own youth. The black Care constantly
rides, behind his chariot. "Ah, my friends," he says, "how beautiful was
youth! We are growing old. Spring-time and Summer are past. We near the
Winter of our days. We shall never feel as we have felt. We approach the
inevitable grave." Few men, indeed, know how to grow old gracefully, as
Madame de Stael very truly observed. There is an unmanly sadness at
leaving off the old follies and the old games. We all hate fogyism. Dr.
Johnson, great and good as he was, had a touch of this regret, and we
may pardon him for the feeling. A youth spent in poverty and neglect, a
manhood consumed in unceasing struggle, are not preparatives to growing
old in peace. We fancy that, after a stormy morning and a lowering day,
the evening should have a sunset glow, and, when the night sets in, look
back with regret at the "gusty, babbling, and remorseless day;" but, if
we do so, we miss the supporting faith of the Christian and the manly
cheerfulness of the heathen. To grow old is quite natural; being
natural, it is beautiful; and if we grumble at it, we miss the lesson,
and lose all the beauty.

Half of our life is spent in vain regrets. When we are boys we ardently
wish to be men; when men we wish as ardently to be boys. We sing sad
songs of the lapse of time. We talk of "auld lang syne," of the days
when we were young, of gathering shells on the sea-shore and throwing
them carelessly away. We never cease to be sentimental upon past youth
and lost manhood and beauty. Yet there are no regrets so false, and few
half so silly. Perhaps the saddest sight in the world is to see an old
lady, wrinkled and withered, dressing, talking, and acting like a very
young one, and forgetting all the time, as she clings to the feeble
remnant of the past, that there is no sham so transparent as her own,
and that people, instead of feeling with her, are laughing at her. Old
boys disguise their foibles a little better; but they are equally
ridiculous. The feeble protests which they make against the flying
chariot of Time are equally futile. The great Mower enters the field,
and all must come down. To stay him would be impossible; We might as
well try with a finger to stop Ixion's wheel, or to dam up the current
of the Thames with a child's foot.

Since the matter i