s with Cato, and rushes perhaps into the
other extreme; for any line at which old age now begins would be hard to
trace either in dress or deportment. "We must resist old age, and
fight against it as a disease". Strong words from the old Roman; but,
undoubtedly, so long as we stop short of the attempt to affect juvenility,
Cato is right. We should keep ourselves as young as possible. He speaks
shrewd sense, again, when he says--"As I like to see a young man who has
something old about him, so I like to see an old man in whom there remains
something of the youth: and he who follows this maxim may become an old
man in body, but never in heart". "What a blessing it is", says Southey,
"to have a boy's heart!" Do we not all know these charming old people, to
whom the young take almost as heartily as to their own equals in age, who
are the favourite consultees in all amusements, the confidants in all
troubles?

Cato is made to place a great part of his own enjoyment, in these latter
years of his, in the cultivation of his farm and garden (he had written,
we must remember, a treatise 'De Re Rustica',--a kind of Roman 'Book of
the Farm', which we have still remaining). He is enthusiastic in his
description of the pleasures of a country gentleman's life, and, like a
good farmer, as no doubt he was, becomes eloquent upon the grand subject
of manures. Gardening is a pursuit which he holds in equal honour--that
"purest of human pleasures", as Bacon calls it. On the subject of
the country life generally he confesses an inclination to become
garrulous--the one failing which he admits may be fairly laid to
the charge of old age. The picture of the way of living of a Roman
gentleman-farmer, as he draws it, must have presented a strong contrast
with the artificial city-life of Rome.

"Where the master of the house is a good and careful manager, his
wine-cellar, his oil-stores, his larder, are always well stocked; there is
a fulness throughout the whole establishment; pigs, kids, lambs, poultry,
milk, cheese, honey,--all are in abundance. The produce of the garden is
always equal, as our country-folk say, to a double course. And all these
good things acquire a second relish from the voluntary labours of fowling
and the chase. What need to dwell upon the charm of the green fields, the
well-ordered plantations, the beauty of the vineyards and olive-groves? In
short, nothing can be more luxuriant in produce, or more delightful to the
eye,