OLD AGE.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2789, 12 May 1911, Page 3

OLD AGE.

There is a popular American fallacy that old men, despite the approval of a good.- deal of contemporary literature, are more or less useless, and that alter fifty years oi age, as an absolute maximum, the employer who properly consults the interests of his business will replace ail semi-centenarians by younger men. It is a cruel and bitter theory that is not borne out by history, as a

writer in an Amnrican magazine is at

pains to show. Science, art, politics, and every other branch of human activity where brains are allowed to count, furnish countless illustrations of the fertility of genius in old age. Handel composed one of his principal oratories at the age of 72, and Samuel Johnson \vas the same age when he published bis " Lives of the Poets." Blucher was

72 when he helped to defeat Napolean at Waterloo, and Galileo was a year older when he discovered the daily and monthly libration of the moon. Thiers became President of the French Republic when he was 74, and Verdi was over 80 when he composed his celebrated " Aye Maria," " Stabat Mater," and "Te Deum," Victor Hugo and Lamartine, on the field of literature, were similarly prolific after passing the Psalmist's allotted span of three score of years and ten, whilst amongst statesmen Bismarck, Crispi, and Gladstone were all leading intellects in affairs of State long after passing the arbitrary maximum of age which has been awarded to mental activity. Cato began to study Greek when he was 80, and Goethe was over that age when he finished " Faust."

Ranke wrote the last of his twelve volumes of " Universal History " when he

was 91. Voltaire ?nd Tennyson were both over 80 when they wrote their

swan songs, and Spencer, Cuizot, Newton and Tallyrand were well into the

eighties when they were engaged on much of their work. Titian was even

more surprisingly active in old age, and painted his masterpiece, " The Battle of .Lepanto," when he was 98. Ch'evreul, who must be allowed to cap the list, which could be enormously increased, published his last work when he was 103 years old. In the face of such

achievements it is presumptuous to put an arbitary limit to the age of man's usefulness, and it is more probable that Dr. Cuyler was right when he assigned youth and early manhood to deeds of heroism and projects of reform, and endowed maturity of years with the faculty for concentrated thought and ripe judgment. In any case the crime of growing old has amply justified itself in the pages

of history,