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    June 16, 1855.] THE LEADER. 581 " ¦

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    HOW TO LIVE A HUNDRED YEARS. Do la Longt...

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    ) Owen Meredith's Poems. ' Clytemnestra,...

    And not a sail above the bumish'd prores ; The languid sea , like one outwearied quite , Shrank , dying inward into hollow shores , And breathless harbours , under sandy bars ; And , one by one , down tracts of quivering blue , The smged and sultry stars WniL SF £ j £ e "Z 0 ? _l eaVG _£ ' ? r > f ? int _l a . nd _few ' _^ _Vd- _^^ S _iSw _^ _ST _5 brme . . , ¦ , At last one broke the silence ; and a word Was hsp d and buzz d about , from mouth to mouth ; Ind men wIt e _iT _^ eP ! * W r _^ " _?"*] _^^ o _^ _S _^ _SS _^ S _^ _uniSr 1 As though some wind had broken from the blurr'd And blazing prison of the stagnant drouth , And stirr'd the salt sea in the stifled south . The long-robed priests stood round ; and , in the gloom , Under black brows , their bright and greedy eyes Shone deathfully ; there was a sound of sighs , Thick-sobb'd from choking throats among the crowd , That , whispering , gathered close , with dark heads bow'd ; _Eut no man lifted up his voice aloud , lor heavy hung o er all the helpless sense of doom . Then , after solemn prayer , The father bade the attendants , tenderly Lift her upon the lurid altar-stone . There was no hope in any face ; each eye bwam tearful , that her own did gaze upon . They bound her he pless hands with mournful care ; And loop d up her long hair , 1 hat hung about her , like an amber shower , Mix'd with the saffron robe , and falling lower , Down from her bare , and cold , white shoulder flung . Upon the heaving breast the pale cheek hung , Suffused with that wild light that roll'd among The pausing crowd , out of the crimson drouth . They held hot hands upon her pleading mouth ; And stifled on faint lipsthe natural cry . Back from the altar-stone , Slow-moving in his fixed place A little space , ,, , _ , ., 1 he speechless father turn d . No word was smd . lie wrapp d his mantle close about his face , In his dumb grief , without a moan . The lopping axe was lifted over-head . Then , suddenly , There sounded a strange motion of the sea , Booming far inland ; and above the east A ragged cloud . rose slowly , and increas'd . ' Not one line in the horoscope of Time ~~ Is perfect . Oh , what falling off is this , When some grand soul , that else had been sublime , Fulls unawares amiss , And stoops its crested strength to sudden crime ! We cannot follow the progress of the piece , nor quote its pathetic and dramatic inventions . The character of Clytemnestra is thorough / original , modern , passionate ; and shows in the writer a power which must hereafter produce striking works . But now having intimated in what we think the excellence of his poem consists , it is right to intimate our opinion on the serious mistake in his design , We pass by minor errors of execution , and come to the capital fault of attempting to reproduce Greek Art in what is accidental , not * in what is essential . He has taken up the Agamemnon with the desire of rewriting it . Very good ; but why , in thoroughly mo- demising the spirit , has he attempted an imitation of the antique form ? Why these choruses , which in the Greek Drama were of primary importance , but which in modern art are senseless ? Again , why these constant allu- sions and phrases which only the scholar can seize , and which to the ordinary reader sometimes become pure absurdities : for instance , the hesitating Herald is asked " if an ox has trodden on his tongue . " Every reader of _dEschylus knows the allusion , but the English reader is puzzled . More- over , if this Greek fidelity of idiom is thought worth preserving , what be- comes of the abiding mode . rnness of the diction ? If Greek is to be spoken , how comes Owen Meredith to write a passage so outrageous as " the hot blood freezes in its arteries , " when every Greek would have opened wide eyes at the very notion of blood being in the arteries at all—the arteries , as the name imports , were thought to be air-carriers _, and were so considered till the time of Galen . We will not press this point . It is enough to hint our objection against all attempts at classical reproduction of forms . The merit of Clytemnestra lies precisel y in the opposite direction . We have left ourselves no room to speak of the other poems at any length . They are inferior to the Clytem- neslra , probably because the greatness of that subject buoyed _tlie poet up . ¦ Th ey are not real ; the feelings they express have for the most part a ficti- tious air ; and they are overdone with scene-painting , for which , however , they show decided faculty . Nevertheless we repent our conviction : Here is another young poet singing on his way to Parnassus ; let tho world listen with approval , and the time will come when grander melodies and deeper harmonies will be struck from his Lyre .

    June 16, 1855.] The Leader. 581 " ¦

    June 16 , 1855 . ] THE LEADER . 581 _" ¦

    How To Live A Hundred Years. Do La Longt...

    HOW TO LIVE A HUNDRED YEARS . Do la _Longtvitd Humaiiw et de la _QuantiM Jc Vic sur Ic Globe . Pur F . _Flourons . Paris : 1855 . This book has made a sensation in Paris ; it has already been reviewed in Blackwood ; and an English translation has just appeared : three circum- stances which _determiners to notice it , in spite of its somewhat arrogant superficiality and magisterial twaddle . The subject of Longevity is one interesting to the public , and perplexing to the physiologist . Everyone Would be glad to live a century j every curious intellect would be _gM to

    J know how such a thing becomes possible . We have already touched on the - _^ fl | I subject in reviewing the works of Dr . Van Oven and Hufeland ( Leader , _^ B I Vol . IV ., page 930 , No . 183 ) , and may therefore treat the present -work more Jfffl discursively and popularly . r ff 9 M . Flourens announces in his usual trenchant style that the normal life of ffl man is a hundred years in duration . He might as well have said that the normal II height of man is six feet and a half . The illustrations of longevity which are 11 recor _- ded > alth ° ugh m T numeroi s tha is F _^ ] arly s _/ rose _^ ' are ext _- mely ii rare in proportion to the vast numbers who fall short of the secular period , viz , l ;§ 9 one in ten thousand . And M . Flourens is not only unhappy in drawing an MM argument from such rare instances , and assuming that in the vast proportion _SM of cases whlch _^ ntradict his argument , the reason of premature death is the f f injudicious use made of life ; Be is in direct _contraction with fact « nd II physiology in asserting that sobriety is the main cause of longevity . Fact M _'P 11 _* 5 us that verv manv or the longest livers have led very irregular , very labo- Jj nous , and some very intemperate lives ; physiology tells us that longevity _" m in itself—apart from all external circumstances—is an hereditary quality , as Js much as length of limb , or susceptibility of nerve : it is part and parcel of 19 the constitution , and therefore is not to be determined by a course of hygiene . | 3 Sobriety and placidness of life will not make one organism endure a century ; _jLWt intemperance , hardship , irregularity will not prevent another organism en- | ' _^§ during a century and a quarter . The reader will not misinterpret these W observations into an assertion that hygiene is indifferent , or that lives are M not shortened by intemperance . What we mean is , that Longevity qua Lon- II gevity is above and beyond hygiene . This is no more than saying that jfl talent is born with us , quite independent of any education the talent may ( _* M receive through circumstance : certain opportunities will favour talent , cer- (| S tain opportunities will misdirect or hamper it , but no opportunities will ' $ 1 create it . Men have a talent for long _lifef ' I M N . . worthy of remark that M . Flourens , when he quits twaddling 1 -1 ~ . , J , . _, ' ... D _~ . _t- _, . , .= ~< m _? moment , and comes to physiology , agrees with Buffon that longevity - _. | does not depend on climate , race , or food -. " it depends on nothing external / ' j | - , f | he says , " it depends solely on the intrinsic virtue of our organs . " Clearly i , " _& it does ; and this " intrinsic virtue" is transmitted from parent to child in _¦} W the same proportion as other qualities are transmitted . Until we can seize { _% £ the cause , or causes , which determine in one organism a successio ? _i ofchanges , ' _t " the termination of which is death—until we can say why one man is ten ! i ik years undergoing a series of changes , which another man undergoes in three , ji _^ 3 _& we are powerless before this question of longevity . The average length of } 2 _&& life indicates but roughly the _average period in which these changes take ' SH _, because the calculation is affected by diseases and accident ! But _|» r ' . _, , _i-i _^ a T -ljjj _n / _v I II no exceptions throw any light . A man may live , to a hundred and fifty , _M which is double the ordinary length of life ; and Buffon tells us of a horse j W which to his knowlege lived h ' fty years , that is , double the length of life J | il § ordinary to horses . Aristotle tells us the camel has been known to live a || y century ; its ordinary term is forty or fifty years . Haller speaks of a lion _'fltt dying at sixty , that is three times the age of ordinary lions . t WBt Life is marked by a succession of Ages , the terminal Age being Death . Each i | 9 of these Ages—dentition , second dentition , puberty , manhood , old age—indi- f JW cates a culmination of changes which have been going on with greater or less ' jjj ] rapidity , and it is on this rapidity that the epoch of culmination depends . Thus , _, j & l although within certain limits we can fix the period of each epoch , yet there is \ %£ considerable oscillation in the times taken by individuals : one child cuts its [ H teeth earlier than another , one reaches puberty earlier than another , one " HU grows old earlier than another . But no child cuts its teeth at twenty or dies _} r . m at two hundred . Further , we may remark , that these" oscillations are greater _l . _^ ig the nearer we approach the end ; simply , because life is more active , the ' ; _, M organic changes are more rapid at the beginning of our career than at the : ' ' iwt end . Hence the differences of longevity" a re not observable so much in boy- _f , || hood as in old age ; the man who is going to live a century cuts his teeth and '•¦¦ ' _^ H reaches puberty as early , or nearly so , as the man who is only capable of _M living half a century . \\ in M . Flourens proposes a new classification of the Ages : he makes youth I _Im extend from twenty to forty ; a conclusion very agreeable to us young dogs , i ( % ! ffl who begin to trace a few white hairs mingling their gravity with locks of in- u \ jl » solent brown ; but although we would willingly impress such a conclusion on i _]»¦ all the ladies of our acquaintance , we cannot ask the dear reader to accept J'i # 1 it . And as to the commencement of old age being thrown on to the seventieth . jjj L * l year , we know not what we shall say to such a proposition thirty years hence ll Iffll at present it excites a smile . If SMm We have done with M . Flourens and bis book . Should it fall in the L lUn reader ' s way he is advised to read it , for , in spite of an offensive foppery in , ; WU the style , and a sad want of scientific consistency , it contains many interest- ; j ifRjl ing details , and one good physiological idea ( that on the growth of the bones , ¦) | jBf which was quoted in our columns , p . 427 ) ; we warn him , however , against j | _m | pinning big faitli on its conclusions . I JilH Another Frenchman , M . Charles Lejoncourt _, published in 1842 a work M _JMfl called Galerie des Centenaires , which , should it . fall in your way , you nre ad- j ; Tiff vised to run through . From his tables we learn that in France im average I ! wi of 150 examples of secular existence nre to lie found annualy . Ane fl Ml examples of longevity he adduces are striking ; they show how hereditary \\ _jjl _w the quality is , and how it triumphs over modes of living . Here we have a i < JIH day-labourer dying at the age of 108 ; his father died at 104 ; his grandfather | | : . mm , at 108 ; his daughter then living was 80 . Here we hnve a saddler whose j _j _| W father died at 113 ; his grandfather at 112 ; and lie himself nt 1 lo . wnen ! l ! he was 113 years of age , Louis XIV asked him what he had done to prolong 1 | | | his life : " Sire , " he replied , « since I was fifty I have acted on two principles ; i : 1 | I hnve shut my heart and opened my wine-cellar ' Here is the widow of a l ,. _^ _mj labourer 110 years old , with nil her tooth , and her hair still b nek and | _| P abundant . At Dieppe there , is a woman of 150 , whose lather Iivecl to _*^ » % _'kMb and whose uncle to 113 . Unt these are nothing to Jean . _^^^ n ihe pH Pole , who , living in 1840 , at the n _? c o 10 _- _h " _^ p _^^ ier Napoleon , _ISf « rmy as common soldier , had se ved m tin , t ; -t ivcu _^ _'R" _/"" , nds and _^ V _^ _HJ had survived the terrible cnmpa . cn in , 11 , _jssia lmd 1 ccc . vcd five _woujds , _L | H | was still in robust health . H » _a lather dicu at i _^ i , b PfH at 130 . , ., i ¦ t _w e article _PiiHI These examples _suffice to bear out what was said early in a « _^ ™

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 16, 1855, page 5, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/scld_16061855/page/5/