seems to be favourable to longevity where the individual nature is hardy enough for its responsibilities.
The Philosophers ought to have length of days for their portion, seeing how their pursuits ought to elevate them above the disturbances of life. And such is, in fact, the operation of their mode of life, by which their faculties are furnished with constant entertainment, on subjects which would seem to lie outside the range of uneasy passions, while creating or exciting the noblest moral emotion. And an unusual amount of healthy longevity is in fact found among philosophers,—whether mathematicians, naturalists, or speculative students. Such things have been heard of as strifes in those serene fields of thought: such sights have been seen as faces furrowed with fretfulness, or working with passion: but the old age of many philosophers is at this moment an honour to their vocation. Peter Barlow was, when he lately died at eighty-two, the same Peter Barlow that he had been to two generations of friends and disciples. Sir David Brewster is still active and occupied at the same age. The late Mr. Tooke did not puzzle his brain about the Currency too much to be still up to the subject at eighty-six. Sir R. Murchison is past seventy, and so is Sir J. Herschel.
Literature ought to have the same operation as science; but it seems to have more room for agitations and anxieties, except in the case of authors who live in and with their work, exempt from self-regards. Jacob Grimm was a very perfect example of the philosophic serenity which a literary career can yield; and he lived to seventy-eight. There is something remarkable in the longevity of literary women in modern times, even if we do not look beyond our own country. Mrs. Piozzi and Mrs. Delany perhaps scarcely enter within the conditions: and the still-lamented Jane Austen was under an early doom from consumption: but Miss Edgeworth was above eighty when she died; Joanna and Agnes Baillie were older still; and Mrs. Trollope died the other day at eighty-four.
The artists who have departed lately have been old. Biot was eighty-seven, and Vernet seventy-four. Our Mulready was seventy-seven; and Professor Cockerell, the architect, was seventy-three.
If long life is a good and desirable thing, we may rejoice that it is manifestly on the increase. However it may be with longevity, we know that the occupation and exercise of the faculties which favours longevity is a very great blessing and a very high privilege indeed. Therefore, though my readers and I may have no personal wishes about living to be very old, we may rejoice that the conditions of prolonged life are becoming more common and more comprehensive from generation to generation.
HEDGING AGAINST FATE.
Walking along the streets of London the other day, and noting a fact which the citizens of all large cities must have had impressed upon their minds—to wit, the magnificence of the buildings of the Insurance Companies,—we could not help asking ourselves if we were not beginning to “hedge” ourselves, to speak in sporting parlance, rather too cleverly against “all the ills that flesh is heir to.” It seems to us that there is a growing conspiracy against Dame Fortune: we are beginning to flout the blind lady, and are becoming shockingly safe in all the relations of life and death. Of old, when a merchant sent forth his argosies, he put up a prayer for a prosperous voyage at the shrine of St. Nicholas; but now he walks to Lloyd’s, insures her for a good heavy sum, and sometimes is not displeased to hear that she has gone to the bottom. It is the same with travellers on land. How odd it is to read of persons making their wills before setting out on a stage-coach journey, as they did in the days of our grandfathers! Now-a-days we make a will, it is true, but in a very different fashion; for we pay threepence, slip a ticket for 1000l., or more, as the case may be, into an envelope addressed to our wife, and take our chance that it will fall into her hands in case of the fulfilment of its prime condition—death. But we are not content with frustrating the effects of death in the thousand odd ways actuaries seem for ever puzzling their brains to find out, but we pooh-pooh accidents, in a monetary sense, in the same cool manner. For instance, there is the Accidental Death Insurance Company, which not only pays our widow a handsome sum in case of our decease in some abrupt unnatural manner, but engages to set us up in weekly clover if a wasp has bitten us, or our favourite dog has given us a spiteful snap. As for slipping on orange-peel, which used to be the terror of bulky old parties, it is now reduced to a positive luxury, inasmuch as it only entails upon us the very irksome duty of resting on the sofa at a weekly allowance of six pounds. Really, under such circumstances, it almost seems our duty accidentally to sprain our ankle in some promiscuous sort of way. If one is an agriculturist, again, what necessity is there for feeling anxiety about crops or stock? Hailstones may be smashing our neighbours’ glass right and left, and beating down their crops, but we are as merry as a glazier under such an infliction; for have we not our policy in our pocket?
But there is a moral kind of insurance society set up of late years, which makes us safe in our minds as well as in our goods and persons. There is not the slightest necessity for troubling ourselves about the trustworthiness of persons in our employ: there are offices which insure the honesty of servants. Integrity is a quality which the superior intelligence of the present day estimates at a fixed money rate; and, provided we insure, it is an advantage rather than otherwise to employ rogues, inasmuch as they are always the cleverest. We should not be surprised to find the article rising in market-price in consequence of this very convenient institution.
Friendship of old induced men to become trustees for orphans and bereaved widows, and certain kindly offices were pretty sure to fall to the lot of benevolent persons, but we have found out the way of doing these pleasant duties, these labours of love, by commission, and such persons