Especially, my young friends, don't pay overmuch attention to what the
Psalmist says about "the years of man." I knew _dans le temps_ a fine
old octo-and-nearly-nonogenarian, one Graberg de Hemsoe, a Swede (a man
with a singular history, who passed ten years of his early life in the
British navy, and was, when I knew him, librarian at the Pitti Palace
in Florence), who used to complain of the Florentine doctors that "Dey
doosen't know what de nordern constitooshions is!" and I take it the
same may be said of the Psalmist. The years beyond three score and
ten need not be all sorrow and trouble. Depend upon it kindly
nature--_prudens_, as that jolly fellow, fine gentleman, and true
philosopher, Horace, says in a similar connection--kindly nature knows
how to make the closing decade of life every whit as delightful as any
of the preceding, if only you don't baulk her purposes. Don't weigh
down your souls, and pin your particles of divine essence to earth by
your yesterday's vices; be sure that when you cannot jump over the
chairs so featly as you can now, you will not want to do so; tell the
girls with genial old Anacreon, when the time comes, that whether the
hairs on your forehead be many or few, you know not, but do know
well that it behoves an old man to be cheery in proportion to the
propinquity of his exit, and go on your way rejoicing through this
beautiful world, which not even the Radicals have quite spoilt yet.
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