“Every day that I rise in good health,” said Buffon to a conceited young man, “have I not the enjoyment of this day as fully as you? If I conform my actions, my appetites, my desires, to the strict impulses of wise nature, am I not as wise and happy as you are? And the view of the past, which causes so much regret to old fools, does it not afford me, on the contrary, the pleasures of memory, agreeable pictures of precious images, which are equal to your objects of pleasure? For these images are sweet; they are pure; they leave upon the mind only pleasing remembrances; the uneasiness, the disappointments, the sorrowful troop which accompanies your youthful pleasures, disappear from the picture which presents them to me. Regrets must disappear also; they are the last sparks of that foolish vanity that never grows old. “Some one asked Fontenelle, when ninety-five years old, which were the twenty years of his life he most regretted. He replied that he had little to regret; but the age at which he had been most happy was that from forty-five to seventy-five. He made this avowal in sincerity, and he proved what he said by natural and consoling truths. At forty-five, fortune is established; reputation made; consideration obtained; the condition of life established; dreams vanished or fulfilled; projects miscarried or matured; most of the passions calmed, or at least cooled; the career in the work that every man owes to society nearly completed; enemies, or rather the enemies, are fewer, because the counterpoise of merit is known by the public voice,” &c. Galen, speaking of Hippocrates, and wishing to represent in one word the man who, in his eyes, constitutes the most perfect type of slowly matured wisdom and profound experience, simply calls him _the old man_. The first rule of the Art of Preserving Life is to know how to be old. “Few men know how to be old,” said La Rochefoucauld. Voltaire has— Qui n’a pas l’esprit de son âge, De son âge a tous les malheurs. The first rule is more philosophic than medical, but is perhaps none the less valuable. The second rule is to know yourself well; which is also a philosophical precept applied to medicine. The third rule is properly to conform to regular habits. Old men, who spend one day like another, with the same moderation, the same appetites, live always. “My miracle is existence,” said Voltaire; and if that foolish vanity which never grows old had not induced him, when eighty-four years of age, to make a ridiculous journey to Paris, his miracle would have continued a century, as was the case with Fontenelle. “Few would believe,” said M. Reveillé-Parise, “how far a little health, well managed, may be made to go.” And Cicero said: “To use what we have, and to act in every thing according to our strength,—such is the rule of the sage.”