robust longevity. In Gilpin's "Forest Scenery" there is the story of one
of these horseback heroes. Henry Hastings was the name of this old
gentleman, who lived in the time of Charles the First. It would be hard
to find a better portrait of a hunting squire than that which the Earl of
Shaftesbury has the credit of having drawn of this very peculiar
personage. His description ends by saying, "He lived to be an hundred,
and never lost his eyesight nor used spectacles. He got on horseback
without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he was past
fourscore."

Everything depends on habit. Old people can do, of course, more or less
well, what they have been doing all their lives; but try to teach them
any new tricks, and the truth of the old adage will very soon show
itself. Mr. Henry Hastings had done nothing but hunt all his days, and
his record would seem to have been a good deal like that of Philippus
Zaehdarm in that untranslatable epitaph which may be found in "Sartor
Resartus." Judged by its products, it was a very short life of a hundred
useless twelve months.

It is something to have climbed the white summit, the Mont Blanc of
fourscore. A small number only of mankind ever see their eightieth
anniversary. I might go to the statistical tables of the annuity and
life insurance offices for extended and exact information, but I prefer
to take the facts which have impressed themselves upon me in my own
career.

The class of 1829 at Harvard College, of which I am a member, graduated,
according to the triennial, fifty-nine in number. It is sixty years,
then, since that time; and as they were, on an average, about twenty
years old, those who survive must have reached fourscore years. Of the