OUGHT OLD MEN TO RETIRE?

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 18, Issue 1159, 30 October 1871, Page 2

OUGHT OLD MEN TO RETIRE?

[FROU A. NEW YORK. BASER 4 What is. happening to. the old men ? According to all established precedents they should retire, give themselves ta contemplation, and leave the bi\sy affairs of life to a. younger race. That may have been the practice in ancient times, but jn our day they hold fast to work, and rule the world light royally, Vou Moltke, quite juvenile at seventy, plans and executes such a campaign as modern ages have never witnessed ; his Sovereign, tough as oak at seventy-four, roughs it on the field as jauntily as a young lieutenant. Yon Roon, the Prussian War Minister, older than either the General or King, directs from, Ber* lin the mavshalling of hosts and gather-, ing of supplies. Nor are these wonders confined to the German side of the con? troversy. Thiers, at 75, nits with the \ vivacity of a boy from one camp to tlift other, is a negotiator of peace, and the executive head of the French Government. Of his associates, Dufaure, the: Minister of Justice, i« 73 ; Guizot, King Louis Philippe's ex-minister, though past 80, writes books with as much precision as when, he occupied a pro* lessor's chair. In England, where men: are reckoned young until they are paj' 50, splendid examples of vigorous old age have not been wanting. Palmer-. ston, Lyndhurst, aud Brougham, octo--genarians all of them., led pubjjc option in Great Britain to the end of their days, and died iu harness., it fesaW the first of the throe that, after- a. §m night in the House of Commons, W would be seen at daylight walking htfPfi at a pace which a, young man coulq hardly equal. Thomas Carlyle, o*ej 70, abates nothing of his intellectuaß vigor; while Lord Russell, tbougjj creeping towards 80, still attends, vm Upper House of Parliament. Our ojj eountry, too, furnishes ua with stnklD | B instances, of hearty old age. (& tewa Jß Drew, and Yanderbiltj the\«|

kings of this city, are old men, as years ,are counted, but still hold firmly in their grasp the great interests which they control. The grave has just closed over Dr. Skinner, who nearly half a century ago was famous as a preacher, and of whom it may be Baid that to the last " his eye waxed not dim, nor did his strength abate." Physiologists tell us that, with a greater prevalence of the knowledge of the laws of health, the world may expect an increase of the average duration of human life. Are we already reaping the fruit of this bitter knowledge in the prolongation of the vigor of the human species 'I The cases we have given are not of an old age enfeebled, retired, and barely tolerated, but of an age still bearing the armour, militant, triumphant. One could almost persuade himself that the golden era is near, and that these splendid examples are the first tokens of its