Especially, my young friends, don't pay overmuch attention to what the Psalmist says about "the years of man." I knew _dans le temps_ a fine old octo-and-nearly-nonogenarian, one Graberg de Hemsö, a Swede (a man with a singular history, who passed ten years of his early life in the British navy, and was, when I knew him, librarian at the Pitti Palace in Florence), who used to complain of the Florentine doctors that "Dey doosen't know what de nordern constitooshions is!" and I take it the same may be said of the Psalmist. The years beyond three score and ten need not be all sorrow and trouble. Depend upon it kindly nature--_prudens_, as that jolly fellow, fine gentleman, and true philosopher, Horace, says in a similar connection--kindly nature knows how to make the closing decade of life every whit as delightful as any of the preceding, if only you don't baulk her purposes. Don't weigh down your souls, and pin your particles of divine essence to earth by your yesterday's vices; be sure that when you cannot jump over the chairs so featly as you can now, you will not want to do so; tell the girls with genial old Anacreon, when the time comes, that whether the hairs on your forehead be many or few, you know not, but do know well that it behoves an old man to be cheery in proportion to the propinquity of his exit, and go on your way rejoicing through this beautiful world, which not even the Radicals have quite spoilt yet. And so _à rivederci_--_au revoir_--_auf Wiedersehn_--why have we no English equivalent better than "Here's to our next pleasant meeting!" INDEX. A.