THE TRIUMPHS OF OLD AGE.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 135, 29 September 1871, Page 5

THE TRIUMPHS OF OLD AGE.

Physiologist* tell us that with a greater prevalence of knowledge of the laws of health the world may expect an increase of the average duration of human life. Perhaps this time is already dawning. At any rate, here are a few " health considerations" for those above sixty. Von Moltke, comparatively juvenile at seventy, plans and executes such a campaign as modern ages never witnessed. Emperor William, tough as oak at seventy-four, roughs it on the field as jauntily as a young lieutenant. Von Roon, the Prussian War Minister, older than either emperor or general, directs from Berlin the marshalling of hosts and gathering of supplies.. Nor are these wonders of longevity by any means confined to the German side of the contest. Thiers, at seventy-five, flits with the vivacity of a boy from one camp to the other, as a negotiator of peace, and the Executive head of the French Government. Of his associate*, Dufaure, the Minister of Justice, is seventy-three, and Guizot, King Louis Phillipe's ex-minister, though past eighty, writes hooks with as much force as when he occupied a professor's chair. In England, where men are reckoned ycung till they are past fifty, splendid examples of vigorous old age are plentiful. Palmerston, Lyndhurst, and Brougham, octogenarians all of them, led public opinion in Great Britain to the end of their days, and died in harness. It is said of the first of the three, that after a field night in the. House, he would be seen at daylight walking home at a pace which a young man might envy. Thomas Carlyle, over seventy, abates nothing of his intellectual vigor; while Lord John Russell, though creeping towards eighty, still attends the Upper House of Parliament.