Mortimer Collins[80] looks back on a prolonged life with calm philosophic poise and concludes that length of life is wholly dependent upon ideas. The theory of Asgill that it is cowardly of man to die appeals to him. Sylvester calculated the lives of nine mathemeticians with an average age of 79, but Collins finds nine literary men whose average age was 85, and so concludes that “imagination beats calculation.” We are islands in an infinite sea; only the instant is ours. The soul makes the body. He holds that in England there is no mode of life healthy enough to secure longevity, either in the city or country, while London is a slow poison. He wants a Utopia, but without religion. He would have a journal kept in every locality noting length or brevity of life, with the causes thereof, as a kind of _vade Mecum_ for the inhabitants. All should live in the open, with plenty of water and hills, enough sleep and good food. Marriage should be congenial and love a liberal education; in short, marriage should be completion. Parents early spoil their children and later fear them. Politics should be eschewed for it shows only the worst side of human nature. We should have books telling us how to enjoy summers, the secret of which even the English gentleman has not yet found. Literature, especially the classics, helps to longevity, and in old age people should do that which they most love, that is most natural and that gives greatest freedom to the play instinct--not that which pays best. Gardening takes us into partnership with God and he prescribes country walks with the sun and the sea. The country gentleman should live an almost Homeric life. The large number of octogenarians in Westmoreland, the lake region of Wordsworth, which has often been noticed, is very significant. The laziest man usually lives longest, but lazing is an art. The style of this author is in places almost lapidary, his views are quaint and abrupt and the reader is impressed with the idea that he is supremely satisfied with old age as he has found it. His radicalism is good-natured and his love of paradox suggests an affectation of originality that does not, however, much impair his fundamental sincerity. He illustrates a type of precocious maturity that finds pleasure in ideas not very well matured. Colonel Nicholas Smith[81] is a homely philosopher of old age who has brought together a vast body of items to hearten the old and to support the thesis that all can greatly prolong their lives if they will. He thinks that as years advance the average brain does more work, and the body less. With remarkable industry he has gathered records of scores and hundreds of old people living, or recently dead, who have maintained their vigor and remained “invincible children,” who never became wholly sophisticated but still dream, wonder, and believe. He almost seems to agree with Emerson that a man is not worth very much until he is sixty.