To prolong my days, I will neither ask the elixir of life from alchymists, nor precepts from physicians. A severe regimen tends to abridge life. Multiplied privations give a sadness to the spirit, more noxious than the prescribed remedies are salutary. Besides, what is physical without moral life; that is to say, improvement and enjoyment? Physicians vaunt the miracles of abstinence and a careful regimen in the case of Cornaro, the Venetian, who was born dying, and yet spun out the thread of life with so much care that he vegetated a century. To attain this result, he weighed his aliment, and marked every hour of the day, with the most minute exactness. Bacon cites the case, but jests upon a man who believed himself living, because, in fact, he was not dead. Moderation, cheerfulness and the happy employment of time furnish the best means of living as many days as nature permits; and the regimen of philosophic moralists has an effect more certain than that of physicians.[57] Every one has observed that a year in youth presents a long perspective; and that the further we advance in our career, the more the course of time seems to accelerate. Let us strive to investigate the causes which so modify our judgments, with a view, if it be possible, to avoid them. There is one inevitable cause--experience. At sixteen, what an illimitable prospective space is seen in the sixteen years that are to succeed! The termination of the latter period is lost to vision in the future, as the commencement of the first years are effaced from the memory of the past. But, in touching the goal which seemed so distant, we have discovered a scale by which the mind’s eye measures the future. Impatient youth, burning to overleap the interval which separates the object from the desires, strives to accelerate the tardy hours. In mature age, on the contrary, seeing every day bringing us nearer the termination of our career, we begin to regret the want of power to arrest the march of time. Thus our weakness hastens the flight which we desire to delay. Let us be less fearful of the uncertain future, and the hours will lose their desolating swiftness.