to M. Flourens-how few ever do reach it!| The subject, as we have sketched it, seemsand of these, again, how few have left them- indeed, really is complete in itself. And yet selves in a condition to taste its peculiar enjoy-speculative questions rise up in connection with ments and compensations! it, some of which awaken doubts as to the main THIRD. But if old age be an enjoyable pe- conclusion at which we have arrived. Grant riod of life-if it be really worth living to, and that human life may naturally extend to a hunliving for, it is worth caring for, when reached. dred years, or even to a century and a half, then It is to be reached, as we have seen, by living a we naturally say to ourselves,-Were men resober life; it is to be reached in good health, by ally to live so long as this, and other animals in a reasonable obedience to the rules of Lessius. proportion, how thickly peopled the world would But when this green and worthy old age is at- become! If births greatly exceed deaths now tained, how is it to be nursed and specially up- among civilized nations, living at a state of peace, how would it be were men to live usually held ? With a view to this special end, M. Reveille to a hundred years, with health and vigor in Parise has laid down four simple rules. proportion! This reflection did not escape the The FIRST is to know how to be old. There great Buffon-great in genius and in capacity is very much in this rule. "Few people know for speculation, but limited, like the time in how to be old," was one of the sayings of which he lived, and often erroneous, in his Rochefoucauld; and the philosophy of this knowledge of facts. He met the objection it knowledge is expressed by Voltaire in the embodies, with a new and brilliant hypothesis. couplet: "Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son age- "The total quantity of life on the Globe," he says, "is always the same. Death, which seems to destroy all, destroys nothing of that primiThe SECOND rule is to know oneself well. tive life which is common to all the species of Both of these precepts are more philosophical organized beings. God, in creating than medical, and yet both lie at the basis of a the first individuals of each species of animal successful medical management, at the period and vegetable, not only gave form to the dust when age and ill health are so likely to of the earth, but rendered it living and animaconjoin. ted by including in each individual a greater or The THIRD rule is to make a suitable adjust- smaller number of active principles, of living ment of the daily life. Good physical habits organic molecules, indestructible in their nature, produce health, as good moral habits produce and common to all organized beings. These happiness. Old men who do every day the molecules pass from body to body, and serve to same thing, with the same moderation and the maintain and continue the life, or to nourish same relish, live forever! "One can scarcely and enlarge the body of every individual alike; believe," says Reveille Parise, "how far a little and after the dissolution of the body, after its health, well treated, will carry us." And "the destruction, even its reduction to ashes, these rule of the sage," says Cicero, "is to make use organic molecules, upon which death has no of what one has, and to act in everything ac- power, still survive, pass into other beings, and cording to one's strength." bring to them nourishment and life. Every And the FOURTH rule is, to attack every mal-production, every renewal, every increase by ady at its beginning. In youth, there is a generation, by nutrition, by development, supreserve of force-a dormant life, as it were, poses then a preceding destruction, a conversion behind the visible acting life. The first life be- of substance, a transport of these organic moleing in danger, this second life comes to its aid—cules which never mulliply, but which, always and thus youth rallies after much neglect or ill existing in equal number, keep nature always usage, and still lives on. But old age has no equally alive, the earth equally peopled, and alsuch reserve life. Every ailment of age, there- ways equally resplendent with the first glory of fore, must be taken up quick and cut short, if Him who created it." the single, unsupported, easily enfeebled life is to be surely upheld. Who, after reading this passage, will deny to Buffon the praise both of genius and eloquence? By following these fundamental rules, and No wonder he has charmed and captivated so the practical precepts as to diet, exercise, tem- many generations of admiring readers, and perature, etc., which M. Reveille Parise deduces persuaded them to receive his poetical imaginfrom them, can we prolong life? No; we can- ings as the dogmas of true science. not, by any art, prolong life, in the sense of The entire doctrine of Buffon, that the quanmaking it pass the limit prescribed by the con- tity of life on the globe is fixed, is a pure specstitution of man. But we shall be able to live ulation. His organic molecules are a second an entire and complete life-extending our still more etherial imagination, devised to exdays as far as the laws of our individual consti- plain the possibility of the first. Except as a tution, combined with the more general laws curious hypothetical notion, wherewithal to which regulate the constitution of the species, while away an idle hour, we would dismiss the will admit of. first not only from our books, but from our thoughts. It can scarcely, in any way, be con- extinct. Immediately before the historic period nected with the positive knowledge of our the mammoth and the mastodon disappeared, time. The second speculation is only to be leaving the elephant as the sole existing gigannumbered with the vain fancies, antiquated tic quadruped. Before these, again, the megathough fine, which abound so much in the purely therium, the dinotherium, and how many poetical physical philosophy of past centuries. others! And yet there is a charm in this poetical phi- "To take a special example. Not less than losophy which makes us regret, while we dis- forty species of pachyderms are known to have miss it. We cannot help admiring the specu- lived on the soil of France, and of these the lators of the olden time, as men of finely-gifted only one that now remains, is the wild boar; minds. And we envy them those happy hours and of nearly a hundred species of ruminating of creative inspiration, when, by their midnight animals, only the ox, the stag, and the roebuck. lamps, or beneath the shade of academic groves, Finally, M. Agassiz reckons not less than they built up poetical worlds, and by imagina- twenty-five thousand species of fossil fishes all tive methods constructed and regulated all lost, while we know only five or six thousand their wheels. living fishes-and of extinct shells forty thousand It is no doubt owing to feelings of this kind are reckoned in a fossil state." that the great views of Buffon, the substance of These facts are admitted, but the conclusion his eloquence, possess still the power to charm which M. Flourens hastily draws from them, and influence M. Flourens. "I reject," he is not admissible. says, "the organic molecules of Buffon, as I do Since life first appeared upon the earth, he the Monads of Leibnitz. They are only philo- says, species have always gone on diminishing. sophic expedients for removing difficulties But of this assertion, the facts he has advanced, which they do not remove. I study life in are no proof whatever. It is an undisputed neither of these, but in living beings them- fact in paleontology, that species, and even selves; and from this study I learn two things genera, have from time to time disappeared from -first, that the number of species has been the surface of the globe. But it is equally uncontinually diminishing ever since animals have disputed that new species and genera have from existed upon the globe; and, second, that the time to time made their appearance-man himnumber of individuals in certain species has self so far as we know, being among the last. been, on the contrary, continually increasing. New forms constantly succeeded the old. And The result of these contrary actions is, that, who shall say that at any one of those epochs taking every thing into account, the total quan- in which life most abounded, the number of spetity of life-by which I understand the total cies or genera was really less than in another? number of living beings-remains in effect, as Who can even, with a show of reason, sayBuffon has said, very nearly the same." taking all species of living things togetherTamed down into plain English, the eloquent that there are fewer genera or species on the imaginings of Buffon, as interpreted and under-earth at this moment—in air, land, and water— stood by M. Flourens, amount simply to this, than at any former geologic era he could name? that the number of individual living beings All that can be safely said is, that man, as the existing at one time on the face of the earth has dominant species, is gradually subduing and exalways been very nearly the same. Out of a tirpating some hundreds of other species in the purely speculative assertion like this, what good present era, and that the individuals of his own can be extracted? Does it really throw any species, and of a few useful domestic animals, light upon paleontological history, or derive are at the same time increasing somewhat in any confirmation from such chapters of this his- number. tory as have yet been written? Does it enable us, in any degree, to understand better the Divine plan and procedure in the past, as it is recorded in the rocky strata-or in the present, as seen in the supposed progressive increase of the human race? But in this latter increase is there anything more than an imaginary compensation for the other forms of life that are lessened or extirpated? Is there in it any evidence of a system of compensation having been in existence in more ancient geological epochs? There is Nevertheless. M. Flourens, in the book before nothing of the sort. The imaginary law of us, sets formally to work to prove his two pro- Buffon is rendered in no degree more probable positions. by the conjectural modifications of M. Flour"That species are always lessening in num- ens. All we can admit at present is, that the ber," he says, "is evident from the fact that quantity of life upon the globe at any one time. several species are known to have become ex- and the forms in which this life manifests itself, tinct in comparatively recent times. The dodo are dependent upon the will of the Deity. To has become extinct since the Portuguese first what general laws He has subjected this total visited the Isle of France in 1545. The primi- quantity and these forms, we cannot even guess. tive types of nearly all our domestic animals the ox, the horse, the camel, the dog-are all! Do these speculations as to the quantity of life upon the globe, interfere in any way with comfort. As to what would happen on the our reasonings and conclusions as to the natural face of the globe, were all men so to live that and possible length of human life? Not in the none should fail to reach this great age-as to least. As an abstract result of physiological how the people would multiply, and what inquiry, it has been rendered probable that would become of them,-these are questions from ninety to a hundred years is the natural which do not concern us as individuals anxious length of an ordinary human life. As a special to live long-which, were we all to begin inand individual positive result, affecting each of continently so to live, could scarcely cause us to whom this information is given, it has anxiety for generations to come, and which we been rendered further probable that, by leading may confidently leave to be answered by the a moderate and sober life, any of us may attain ALL-DISPOSER. this length of life in comparative health and From the New York Observer. I stand upon the river's verge, 'Tis not alone the billows' roar For angel harps are turned to cheer And angel tongues are chanting there Though dim and faltering grows my sight Beyond the darkening wave; The gales that toss its crest of foam The everlasting hills arise, Loved faces look upon me now, And well-known voices speak! I thought my heart would break! Earth, home and time, farewell! The snowy, blood-washed robe I'll wear- Welcome, the waves that waft me there THE WIND. The wind went forth o'er land and sea, Foaming waves leapt up to meet it, And the forest's murmured sigh Of the wind that swept o'er land and sea. Cast the bark upon the shore, And the cry of pain and death Through the wind that roar'd upon the sea. The wind was whispering on the lea Tenderly; But the white rose felt it pass, All her trembling petals shed, So gently by,-the wind upon the lea. And a gentler message send, For thy bidding still is one, Be it done In tenderness or wrath, on land or sea! Household Words. MORALITIES. Marriage is the nursery of Heaven-Jeremy Taylor. Sleep is the fallow of the mind. There are graves no time can close. Flattery is a sort of bad money, to which our vanity gives currency-Rochefoucault. Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defence of manners.-Chesterfield. We seldom find people ungrateful so long as we are in a condition to serve them.-Rochefoucault. Covetousness, like a candle ill-made, smothers the splendor of a happy fortune in its own grease.-F. From The Edinburg Review. to adorn and enjoy it, and light and heat are ART. VII.-The Chemistry of Common Life. awakened or extinguished at will. The inacBy JAMES F. W. JOHNSTON, M. D., F. R. tive nitrogen dilutes the too energetic oxygen, S. L. & E., Reader in Chemistry and Min- so as to make animal life longer, and to suberalogy in the University of Durham. 2 ject living fire to human control; while the vols. post 8vo. Blackwood: 1855. poisonous carbonic acid is rendered harmless to animal life by the very small proportion in THE Common life of man is full of wonders, which it is mixed with the other airs. chemical and physiological. The manner and One of the most admirable, indeed, of Nameans of our existence,-every necessary we ture's wonders in the material world, is the consume, every material comfort we enjoy,-purpose served by this carbonic acid gas. It all the parts and functions of the bodily organs self poisonous in a high degree, it can be through which we enjoy them, everything, in breathed by man with impunity only in very short, which concerns our daily individual life, minute quantity; that is, in an extreme state -abounds in admirable marvels, which chem- of dilution. Hence, the atmosphere in which istry and chemical physiology disclose. Dr. man lives contains only one gallon of this gas Johnston has described and discussed these in every 2,500. And so small is this quantity, subjects, at once so familiar and so obscure,- that the weight of carbon in this form which so universally felt and so imperfectly under- the whole atmosphere contains, amounts only stood,-in one of the most agreeable and in- to thirty-three grains out of the fifteen pounds structive publications of the present day. We of air which press upon every square inch. shall follow him rapidly through the general Yet by this comparatively minute quantity all divisions of his subjects, and terminate our ob- vegetable life is nourished and sustained. servations by some of the examples which the Doctor draws from the habits and wants of our daily lives. Look out in the coming spring-time at the bursting bud. Watch how beneath the midday sun, the tiny leaflet spreads out its yellow If we begin, for example, with that univer- surface to the favoring rays. See how from sal air which floats around us,-which expands day to day its hue becomes greener, and its our lungs and permeates every tissue of our several parts increase in size. This growth bodies-modern chemistry informs us that. will continue till closing summer finds the though considered simple and elementary by little bud changed into a magnificent plant, the ancients, this air is a mixture of at least clad with copious leaves, and successively three elastic fluids, equally subtle and invisible, blooming with gay flowers, or borne down by and equally essential to the purposes which the a burden of tempting fruit. Autumn will atmosphere is intended to serve. These are succeed, to stop the growth and give a new the now well-known gases nitrogen, oxygen, color to its leaves; and chill winter will strip and carbonic acid. In the first, flame dies and it of all its leafy pride, and leave it naked as no life can persist; in the second, bodies burn when spring-time began. and animals live with great intensity; in the Such is the yearly plant-life, as seen by the third, both life and flame are extinguished. ordinary cultivator, or watched with daily care Though so different in their properties when by the lover of vegetable nature. But, betaken singly, the admixture of them, which neath this outer open life, there is an inner seforms our atmosphere, is adjusted-in kind cret life which the common eye does not see. and in the relative proportions of each-to the A constant invisible intercourse has all the condition of things both living and dead, which time been taking place between the external now obtains on the surface of the earth. air and the most hidden parts of the internal Did the air consist of nitrogen only, the plant. No sooner does the little leaf burst sun's rays would be the sole source of heat the swelling bud, than a thousand unseen wherever the atmosphere extended, and no mouths open on its surface to suck in the airy existing plant or animal could flourish on the food which now for the first time comes within globe. Were it formed of oxygen only, fire, their reach. These minute mouths (stomata) once kindled, would refuse to be extinguished, are scattered in millions over the leaf, now on and conflagration would spread, till everything its upper, now on its under side, and now on combustible in the earth was consumed. Did both-according to the circumstances in which it consist of carbonic acid only, death and com- the plant is destined to live. Beginning with parative stillness would reign everywhere, and the first dawn of sunlight, they perpetually the production of light and heat such as we suck in carbonic acid from the atmosphere, and can now command, would be utterly impossi-give off oxygen gas in nearly equal volume, ble. But the happy mixture of the three till the sun goes down. Then, with a view to gases which now prevails, renders everything other chemical ends, and, obedient to the repossible. Under their united influence the tiring sun, they change the nature of their rocks crumble to form a fertile soil, plants work. While darkness lasts, they take back flourish to cover it with verdure, animals live carbonic acid from the air, and give out again ral liberty; the spirits (in the language of the| And we divide each again into an carlier and later times) move pleasantly through the arteries, the period of uncertain duration. We talk of later blood runs through the veins, a temperate and infancy, of early youth, of full manhood, of deagreeable warmth produces agreeable and tem-clining old age, without attaching any fixed or perate efforts; and, finally, all our powers, with definite ideas to these expressions. a most beautiful order, preserve a joyous and "I propose, however," says M. Flourens, in a grateful harmony. O most holy and innocent book which has recently awakened the attention sobriety," he concludes, "the only cooler of of all Paris-"I propose the following natural nature, gracious mother of human life, true divisions and natural durations for the whole life medicine of mind and body-how ought men of man :to praise thee, and to thank thee for thy cour"The first ten years of life are infancy, properteous gifts!"* ly so called; the second ten is the period of For all these eulogies of Cornaro there is an boyhood; from twenty to thirty is the first undoubted substratum of truth and fact; and youth; from thirty to forty the second. The we are safe in conceding that, from the sober first manhood is from forty to fifty-five; the selife of Lessius and Cornaro, two main blessings cond from fifty-five to seventy. This period of are likely to flow-health, with its attendant manhood is the age of strength, the manly period comforts, and long life, with its continued en- of human life. From seventy to eighty-five is joyments. Let us leave the former for the pres- the first period of old age, and at eighty-five the ent, since health is a blessing which all have expe- second old age begins." These periods all shade rienced more or less, and all can judge of and insensibly into each other, so that, in an actual value. But we may usefully consider the old life, we can hardly tell where the one ends and age to which this life is. to lead us. the other begins. They vary in length, also, in Now, in regard to this old age there are three different individuals, and most men now-a-days things we naturally askbecome old and die while they ought still to have been in the period of early manhood. First, At what time of life does old age naturally begin, and how long does it naturally last ? The limits thus assigned by Flourens to the several periods of life are not wholly arbitrary, Second, Is this old age really worth having? like those we generally talk of; on the contrary, Is it worth living for? Will it repay us for the a more or less sound physiological reason is asself-restraint and self-denial which are necessary signed for each. Infancy proper ceases at ten to attain it ? And years, because then the second toothing is comThird, Should we really reach and value it, pleted-boyhood at twenty, because then the how is it to be best nursed and upheld? bones cease to increase in length-and youth FIRST. The first of these is the most difficult extends to forty, because about that time the to answer. Up to the present time we have body ceases to increase in size. Enlargement only been able to hazard guesses, both as to of bulk after that period consists chiefly in the when old age begins, and when life naturally accumulation of fat. The real development of ends. What David puts into the mouth of the parts of the body has already ceased. InMoses we still generally receive as a fair expres- stead of increasing the strength and activity, sion of the truth regarding the length of human this latter growth weakens the body and retards life: "The days of our years are threescore its motions. Then, when growth has ceased, years and ten; and if by reason of strength they the body rests, rallies, and becomes invigorated. be fourscore years, yet is their strength, labor Like a fortress, with all its works complete, its and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly garrison in full numbers, and threatened with an away." And fixing the limit of life at seventy early siege, it repairs, arranges, disposes everyor eighty, we of course reckon old age to begin thing within itself. The new stores it daily a great many years earlier. receives are employed in fully equipping, in But physiological anatomy has recently come strengthening, in rebuilding and in maintaining to our aid, and professes now to give us definite every part in the greatest perfection and effiand precise views, in regard both to when old ciency. This period of internal invigoration age begins, and when the complete life of man lasts fifteen years, (that of the first manhood,) naturally ends. and it maintains itself for ten or fifteen years The life of the body naturally divides itself more, when old age begins. into two parts. During the first, the body in- And what marks the beginning of old age ? creases in size and development; in the second, In youth and manhood we perform a usual daiit decreases or becomes less. The first half in- ly amount of physical and mental labor; but we cludes the two stages of infancy and youth-are able to do more. Let an emergency arise, the second half, those of manhood and decay. and we find within us a reserve of strength which These are the four periods or epochs of human enables us to accomplish far heavier labors; we life which are generally received and spoken of CORNARO, Discorso Primo. Psalm xc., verses 10-(a song of Moses.) double or triple our exertions, we accomplish the unusual work, and after a little rest we are Jas strong and hale as ever. Old age has come |