all situations, if any man’s ever were, was in a state of manifest exhilaration every year, when the shortest day was past; and he was like a very wise child, when the first wood anemone, or violet, or brood of chicks, or young lamb came across him, up to the last year of his life. It is the same thing with old music for those who can hear; and old flowers and sunsets for those who can see. The delight is transient in the extreme, after a certain point of superannuation is reached; but, if this is a sign of second childhood, so is the vividness of the enjoyment. If both these chief senses are dulled past exciting, the next question is about the provision of inner material.
If the mind cannot act without the stimulus of external influences, a state of general apathy will ensue on the decay of sight and hearing. If the mental constitution be of a higher order, self-sustaining and self-moving, the aged person himself is surprised to find what complete satisfaction he is still capable of. If his interests have been of an intellectual order, he lives almost as much now as ever. Literature is as charming to him as if he kept the substance of what he reads for use; whereas the impression is now very superficial. Philosophy exalts and chastens his mood, and sustains his habit of composure and patience, though he can no longer lay it down as the foundation of some work of wisdom or beauty. Such a kind of superannuation is too rare and select, however, to be dwelt upon as a sample of this experience of human life. We must look lower among average people, for a lesson for the many.
Average people, if their minds are alive when their senses are shut up, may, if they have but good tempers, take up for themselves that exquisite song[1] intended for a different kind of enforced seclusion:—
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage:
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,—
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.
If their hearts are warm, and their habits of mind simple, unselfish, and self-respecting, they often show themselves surprised that their “quiet way of life” is so full of amusement, so devoid of dulness, though few sights or sounds reach them, and they have no pleasure in eating and drinking, and seldom have a good night’s sleep. When they are ill, they sometimes say, “Never mind, my dear! What can it signify whether I go now or some months hence?” but perhaps it happens oftener that they say, “I should like to live a little longer, if it had pleased God: but no doubt it is all right.”
This is the saying which shows that the “sorrow”—the peculiar sorrow of old age—is no great burden. There are hours when the sorrows of survivorship are certainly very dreary, as any of us can tell who have witnessed the consternation or the tears of aged persons who say that there is now “not one left” of the companions of their earlier life. But the impression is brief. On the one hand, there is the consolation “I shall not be long after them;” and on the other, there are the interests of the hour—the newer generations round about them, and the wonderful new spectacles of an advancing century. Instead of grumbling old people, who insist that “the former days were better than these,” we now more commonly meet with ancients who are proud, as Humboldt was, of surviving so many of the world’s elders, and of having lived to see the human race getting on so fast with its improvements. This is a pleasanter spectacle than that of the grumblers: but there is a better still. I have seen an aged person who would have bowed her head before the youngest of Humboldt’s order, who yet rose above everybody, philosopher or other, who had any vanity about living so long. She never compared herself with anybody, because she had no self-regards. She was always ready, to a minute, to depart; while she daily triumphed in the spread of education, and of the moral and material arts of life.
Before going on to the remaining case—the one other aspect—of superannuation, we may consider for a moment what is the proper treatment of this decline of human vitality.
The physical symptoms are familiar enough. Old people are chilly, apt to eat what for others would be too little or too much (generally too little); unapt to sleep at night, and therefore frequently drowsy in the day; apt to forget the time and be unpunctual; or, on the other hand, over precise and jealous of interference. The commonest vanity of old age is very like that of childhood,—the conceit of being able to take care of itself.
Amidst the noblest and sweetest moral graces of old age, some one of these liabilities is pretty sure to appear. The hoary head is indeed a crown of glory to one who is exempt from them all.
In treating them, the best method generally is, indulgence. It is a sad mistake to medicate and discipline old age as one would a morbid condition of earlier life. I once heard a dutiful daughter of a very old mother say, after her mother’s death, that the illness had taught her one lesson,—never to tease an aged invalid to eat, or to do anything undesired by the patient. Even where the food taken is little or none, so that life cannot be prolonged, it is better, we agreed, to let things take their course. “It is of less consequence,” said she, “that one in that condition should live a month more or less than that she should be spared all contradiction and opposition.” Some difficulty there must be with one who has a jealousy of independence, without prudence to justify it, like a certain aged marchioness who wore high caps, and would sit alone, writing and sealing letters, and nodding over the candles. She was burnt, with the great mansion which her high head-dress set on fire. This is the most embarrassing particular, perhaps, in the case of aged people. I have known one who, in the last year, before she became too ill to be left, set herself on fire three times, by choosing to read the newspaper late at night, and falling asleep over it. Another was fond of stirring the fire when unable to