pired.* Two soldiers of the civil wars died at one hundred and twelve in 1733.†

I will select another instance for your consideration, as it presents a remarkable instance of one of the great pleasures and benefits attending longevity-that of beholding the improvements which, during a single life, a prospering nation enlarges into. He was an American, who saw the site on which Philadelphia stands before this city was founded, and its wealth and magnitude to which it had grown before he died. As the knowledge of such a person may have suggested to Mr. Burke that simile of the angel and Lord Bathurst, in one of his speeches on America, which equals the finest effusions of ancient oratory, I will cite here the whole account that was attached to the notice of his death.

"EDWARD DRINKER, of Philadelphia, aged one hundred and three. He lived on very solid food, drank tea in the afternoon, but ate no supper. "He was an amiable character, uniformly cheerful and kind to everybody. His religious principles were as steady as his morals were pure. He was four times married, and had 18 children, all by his first wife. He lost his teeth thirty years before he died, by drawing [qu. chewing] extremely hot tobacco.

"The life of this man was marked with several circumstances which have seldom occurred in the life of an individual.

"He saw the same spot of earth covered with wood, and a receptacle for beasts and birds of prey, afterward become the seat of a city, not only the first in wealth and arts in the New, but rivalling in both many

* William Billings, aged one hundred and fourteen, of Fairfieldhead, near Longnor, Staffordshire. "He had lived to this age free from sickness, and expired without a groan. He was the only surviving private in England who had served under the great Duke of Marlborough. He was born under a hedge, in the year 1679, not a hundred yards from the cottage where he died."-Easton, p. 257.

Mr. Truss, of Clay Hill, near Enfield, Middlesex, was a soldier in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and William Haseling had served in the parliament army at the battle of Edgehill; afterward under King William in Ireland, and Marlborough in Flanders. Both were one hundred and twelve.-Ib., 16, 17.

John Couse died in 1752, aged one hundred and twelve. He was born in France, and served three campaigns in Flanders under Louis XIV., then entered into the Dutch service, came to Ireland under Duke Schomberg, enlisted under King William, and distinguished himself in most of the battles. On leaving the army he took a farm.-Ib., 37,

Very few aged sailors occur. In 1753, a Dutchman who had been in all the expeditions of Admiral Ruyter died at one hundred and four, at Rotterdam.-Ib., 39. In 1769, a ship-carpenter was one hundred and five, who was at work in the yard when the Czar Peter came to learn shipbuilding.-Ib., 116. In 1780, William Ellis died, one hundred and thirty-one, of Liverpool, shoemaker. He had been a seaman in the reign of Queen Anne, and a soldier in that of George I.-Ib., 166.

of the first cities in the Old World. He saw regular streets where he once pursued a hare; churches rising upon morasses where he had often heard the croaking of frogs; wharves and warehouses where he had seen Indian savages draw fish from the river for daily subsistence; ships of every size and use in those streams where he had often seen nothing but Indian canoes; a stately edifice, filled with legislators, astonishing the world with their wisdom and virtue, on the same spot, probably, where he had beheld an Indian council-fire.

"He saw the first treaty ratified between the newly-confederated powers of America and the ancient monarchy of France, with all the formality of parchment and seals, where he had seen William Penn ratify his first and last treaty with the Indians without the formalities of pen, ink, or paper. He beheld all the intermediate stages through which a people pass, from the lowest to the highest degree of civilization-the beginning and end of the empire of Great Britain in Pennsylvania. He had been the subject of crowned heads, and afterward died a citizen of the newly-created republic of America. He embraced the liberties and independence of America, and triumphed, in the last years of his life, in the salvation of his country."

"*

It has been remarked, that most of the persons distinguished for great longevity were short in stature; but one is mentioned who was unusually tall.† It has even accompanied deformity; and, what must be still more unusual, uncommon fatness. Even watery marshes, which in Ely and Essex have been found so unfavourable to the continuance of human life, yet have not prevented the term of a century from being exceeded. The negro constitution is also susceptible of lon

*Easton, p. 184. This sketch has in it so much of Mr. Burke's manner, both of style and thought at that time, that, if it be in the " Annual Register" of 1782 or 1783, I should be induced to think he was the author of it. As he was for some years the political agent of the leading men of America when they began their resistance, he may have been in correspondence with Mr. Drinker.

Philadelphia, in 1761, had a couple several years older; but as they died that year, they did not live to see either the revolt or the independence; they were, "Charles Cotteral, one hundred and twenty; his wife, one hundred and fifteen. This couple lived together in the marriage state ninety-eight years in great union and harmony, and died within four days of each other."-Ib., 56.

† In 1769, "Peter Breman, aged one hundred and four, of Dyer-street, St. Giles, was six feet six inches high. He had been a soldier from the age of eighteen."-Ib.,, 114.

Mary Jones, of Wem, in Shropshire, in 1773, was one hundred. She was very deformed, and only two feet eight inches in height.-Ib., 141.

In 1786, Charles Blezard, of Newnham, near Oxford Farm, died at one hundred and seven. He was one of the most corpulent men in the county.-Ib., 205.

In 1796, Susan Mills died, aged one hundred and two. She resided in the Ship-meadow Lockhouse, on the Bungay navigation. Her hus

gevity, rivalling in duration the whites.* Gipsy life, as before mentioned, with all its exposures and frequent misery, equally admits of it, and even amid its infirmities.†

The persons of other nations besides our own, who have been mentioned for their longevity, show that no regions of the world or state of society are incompatible with it. The South American Indians, the Caraccas, Brazil, Egypt, Tyrol, Turkey, Norway, Spain, Denmark, and Poland, furnish instances of it, which indicate that its causes reside not in soil, or atmosphere, or manners, but in the individual frame, and in the personal application of the blessing by Him from whom all life has originated, and by whom it is constantly regulated in every member of human societies. We may therefore conclude that this great longevity is one of the established laws of human life, although limited as yet to a ratio of indi

band was manager on the locks. Her residence was mostly surrounded by floods throughout the winter.-Easton, p. 268.

*At Kingston, in Jamaica, in 1796, Samuel Pinnock, a negro man, at one hundred and twenty-five. Till within the last two years his faculties were perfectly sound and his memory remarkably retentive. He had a perfect recollection of the earthquake which, in 1692, nearly destroyed Port Royal. He was on board a ship lying near Fort Augusta when it took place, and has frequently related the catastrophe with a minuteness of detail which no one but an eyewitness could have given. -lb., 276. In 1798, Elizabeth Brown, a negro woman, died at Port Royal at one hundred and twenty-four years old.--Ib., 286. And another in Spanish Town of one hundred and six; another of St. Jago de la Vega, a free negro woman, aged one hundred and twenty-one.-Ib., 287. f Thus, in 1740, died Margaret Finch, at one hundred and nine. "She was one of the wandering fraternity of gipsies, of whom she was called queen. Her manner of life was the same as is usual with those people. Towards its close she took up her residence at Norwood."-Ib., 23. In 1799 Anne Day died at one hundred and eight. "She was a well-known gipsy. Being almost double, she travelled the country on an ass, attended by two or three of her fraternity, and was well known in most parts. She had not slept in a bed for seventy years; and for the last forty years had not a tooth in her head; nor sight, but in one eye; about twelve years before, she lost three of her toes by the frost and the use of one of her arms. She died under a hedge near Henlow, in Bedfordshire, and was buried at Arsley. The two of her people who attended her funeral called themselves her son and daughter: he was eighty two, and she eighty-five. They had each great grandchildren.-Ib., 288.

Another instance of gipsy longevity has just occurred. "Andrew Boswell, the King of the Gipsies, died on Monday afternoon, 30th of January, 1837, at the advanced age of ninety-nine. He was possessed of an ass nearly as old as himself, a camp, and a fiddle, and left one grandson, and twelve sons and daughters. His remains were interred by the tribe, with all the due honours, in Laneham churchyard.-Nottingham Journal, Feb., 1837.

vidual enjoyment of it, which is sufficient to excite the desire of attaining it, and to testify to us its possibility, but which has not hitherto been made a general acquisition.*

* From Mr. Easton's collection from the obituaries he met with, I select the following instances of foreigners of great longevity :

"1788. Jean Cayaton, aged one hundred and thirty, an Indian of Tesentla, in New Spain, p. 221.

"1782. Captain Cespedes, of the Caraccas, one hundred and ten years. He belonged to the militia of Pardo, and was esteemed a prodigy for that climate, p. 225.

"1775. Andrew Vidal, of Siara, in Brazil, one hundred and twentyfour. He had thirty sons and five daughters. In 1773 he lived in the same house with his children and grandchildren, of whom the number amounted to 149, p. 150.

"1772. Died, aged one hundred and twenty-eight, Abraham Shodman, at Rouen. He was a native of Alexandria, in Egypt, p. 130.

"1778. Jean Aragus, at one hundred and twenty-three, of Lastrea, in Turkey, a caravan driver, p. 158.

"1765. Edglebert Hoff, at one hundred and twenty-eight, of Fish Hill, New-York. He was born in Norway, and could remember that he was a lad driving a team there when the news was brought that King Charles I. was beheaded. He had served as a soldier under the Prince of Orange, in the time of James II., p. 85.

"1743. Peter Mestanca, of the village of Veniel, in the kingdom of Murcia, at one hundred and thirty. He was a bachelor, never tasted wine, worked hard, and bathed every morning in the river Segura, from the beginning of spring until it froze again. His teeth were sound, and he was never attacked by any acute distemper, p. 26.

"1771. Christia Jacobsen Drackenberg, one hundred and forty-six, of Aarhus, in Denmark, a celebrated and well-known character, p. 132. "1786. M. Oztroki, of Zodorsky, in Poland, one hundred and twentyfive. He attended as page on John Sobieski when he relieved Vienna, besieged by the Turks in 1683," p. 208.

To these I will add-"1790. John Lovah, the celebrated patriarch of Mount Jura, aged one hundred and twenty-eight. He was sent, in 1789, as a deputy to the National Assembly at Paris, to return thanks, in the name of his countrymen, for the abolition of the feudal system. At one hundred and twenty-seven he was led into the hall by his daughter, and seated opposite the president. On his entrance, all the members rose up in respect to his old age, and received him standing, and desired him to sit covered. A subscription was immediately made for his support, and the king granted him a pension. He was buried the next year in his district with a public solemnity," p. 236.

LETTER XXIV.

Longevity made a Natural Property of Human Nature.-At present increasing in frequency.-Not attended naturally with Decay of Faculties.-Instances of its Efficiency.-Distinguished Men among the Ancients who were Aged.

MY DEAR SON,

We are entitled, by the preceding facts, to believe that longevity is one of the natural qualities of the human body, in its material composition, during that association of our mind with it which constitutes our human life. The mind itself being indestructible by our present death, would subsist for a thousand years, or for an endless succession of time, if its bodily organizations had been framed to last so long. Not merely longevity, but perpetuity of existence, is one of the essential properties of the human soul. No power but its Maker's, and no act but the exertion of his omnipotence, can extinguish that. But the residence which has been assigned to it on this globe is meant to be only for a time; and its body has been so formed as to be either a long or brief companion to it. The union of the soul with it here is of the same temporary character. The chronology of this union, and of the duration of the bodily compound, is therefore concurrent, and begins and ends with both at the same periods. Birth commences and death terminates it. But the soul is no servant of time; to this its origin appertained; but, once brought into being, it belongs to time no longer. It was created to be a member and an inheritor of eternity; and, with this relation, it lives through its journey here, and afterward passes elsewhere, with the same inalienable, undying property. Hence any extent of longevity in this world is but a dramatic section of its everlasting history and activity. We are all actors here, in our present human figures, during the scenes through which we pass; but, like all those who personate the parts allotted to them in our tragedies or comedies, we leave the stage and audience before whom we have been appearing for other employments, for another home, and for a different kind of happiness, or the contrary, in some other place of its