Instances of this kind are much rarer in Europe than in tropical climates. Negresses in the West Indies sometimes attain an age which is seldom ascertained because it is far beyond living memory. They outlive all voluntary power, and their descendants of the third or fourth generation carry them out of their cabins into the open air, and lay them, like logs, as the season may require, in the sunshine, or in the shade. Methinks if Mecænas had seen such an object, he would have composed a palinode to those verses in which he has perpetuated his most pitiable love for life. A woman in New Hampshire, North America, had reached the miserable age of 102, when one day as some people were visiting her, the bell tolled for a funeral; she burst into tears and said “Oh when will the bell toll for me! It seems as if it never would toll for me! I am afraid that I shall never die!” This reminds me that I have either read, or heard, an affecting story of a poor old woman in England,—very old, and very poor,—who retained her senses long after the body had become a weary burden; she too when she heard the bell toll for a funeral used to weep, and say she was afraid God had forgotten her! Poor creature, ignorantly as she spake, she had not forgotten Him; and such impatience will not be accounted to her for a sin. These are extreme cases, as rare as they are mournful. Life indeed is long enough for what we have to suffer, as well as what we have to learn; but it was wisely said by an old Scottish Minister (I wish I knew his name, for this saying ought to have immortalized it,) “Time is short; and if your cross is heavy you have not far to carry it.” _Chi ha travaglio, in pace il porti: Dolce è Dio, se il mondo è amaro. Sappia l'uom, che al Cielo è caro; Abbia fede, è aura conforti._[1] Were the term shorter it would not suffice for the developement of those moral qualities which belong peculiarly to the latter stage of life; nor could the wholesome influence which age exercises over the young in every country where manners are not so thoroughly corrupted as to threaten the dissolution of society, be in any other manner supplied. [Footnote 1: MAGGI.] “_Il me semble que le mal physique attendrit autant que le mal moral endurcit le cœur,_” said Lord Chesterfield, when he was growing old, and suffering under the infirmities of a broken constitution. Affliction in its lightest form, with the aid of time, had brought his heart into this wholesome state. _O figliuol' d'Adam, grida Natura, Onde i tormenti? Io vi farà tranquilli, Se voi non rebellate alla mia legge._[2]