Page:Letters of Life.djvu/374

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
362
LETTERS OF LIFE.

understand with her. It is, much more than 'De Senectute,' Christianized. It is devotion, philosophy, and poetry so intertwined, that each is enriched and adorned by the association. It describes, indeed, the straitnesses and sadnesses of growing years, but sets off against them their more than preponderant immunities and felicities. It treats of the duties of the aged, and their rights and dues at the hands of the younger. It gives biographical sketches and anecdotes of good and happy old men and women. Above all, it blends with the serene sunset of a well-spent life the young morning beams of a never-setting day. It will carry solace to many a fireside, and rekindle hope and gladness in many a soul that scarcely dares to look into its earthly future."


1857.

51. "Examples from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries."

Still keeping in view that the lives of the great and good, like grand pictures, give present pleasure and lasting remembrance, and that what we thus contemplate may become not only a cheering sympathy but a controlling pattern, I constructed another biographical work. It was printed in three hundred and forty-nine pages by the same publisher who brought out its predecessor, which extends over a space of thirteen hundred years; and though this was limited to a single