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LITERATURE.
361

1854.

50. "Past Meridian."

A conviction that the period of advanced life is seldom correctly appreciated either by those who reach or those who regard it, moved me to adduce arguments to enforce its value, and examples of its happy combination with usefulness and honor. The plan was brought to a crisis, by chancing to look over, as an exercise in Latin, "Cicero de Senectute" written when he was between sixty and seventy, and thinking that, if a heathen could discover so much beauty in age, Christian philosophy should be able more perfectly to illustrate how the latest drop of existence might exhale in a song of praise to the Giver. This work was written carefully and with pleasure, and is stereotyped in three hundred and forty-four pages by Brown & Gross, Hartford, with that large, clear typography which accommodates spectacled eyes.

"The North American Review," our highest umpire in the realm of intellect, deigns thus to characterize it: "This is one of the comparatively few books in our day which will be read with glistening eyes and glowing heart, when all who now read shall have gone to their graves. It is written by Mrs. Sigourney, in the character of one who has herself past the meridian of life, and addresses itself to sensations and experiences which all whose faces are turned westward can feel and