THE SECRET OF LONGEVITY.

S it not surprising that, notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject of longevity, so little is really known of the causes and conditions of long life? A few general hints may be gathered from the records of centenarians, but no exact or satisfactory knowledge. Sir G. C. Lewis, who carefully investigated the subject, positively denied that any man ever reached a hundred years, though he was nearly convinced that there were in his day some authentic cases of female centenarianism. His great argument for his position was, that since the Christian era no person of royal or noble birth has been alleged to have reached the magic limit. Just as the giants of antiquity, seen through the mist and fog of ages, loom up in preternatural proportions, and dwindle as we draw near the light of modern times, so the lives of the centenarians swell or diminish in length as we advance toward or recede from the prehistoric times. If it be argued that kings and nobles have been exposed to greater dangers and more exhausting labors than other men,—that the cares of state, the fierce contentions of politics, the brain-work incident to tangled affairs and court cabals, cut short their days, it may be urged on the other hand, that the higher the rank, the greater the care with which they would be nursed, the better the medical attendance, the food, air, clothing, and all the other conditions on which health and longevity are supposed to depend. It must be admitted that

the higher a man's rank, the greater is the chance of accuracy in respect to dates; and that if, in all the cases which can be easily attested, centenarianism has been found to be a myth, there is, at least, a strong presumption against the obscure centenarians who grow up in places where the system of registration is unknown, and where skepticism is less common than credulity and love for the marvelous. This presumption, however, is liable to be rebutted by facts; and we think they exist in sufficient abundance not only to overthrow it, but to prove centenarianism beyond all reasonable doubt. To go back no farther than the Romans, Pliny states, from the record of a census taken during the reign of Vespasian,- a source of information. entirely trustworthy, that there were living, in the year 76, in Italy, in the district between the Apennines and the Po, 124 persons who had attained to the age of 100 years and upward. Three of them had lived to 140. Haller long ago declared that more than 1,100 persons had been known to have reached to various ages between 100 and 169. Thomas Bailey's book, "Records of Longevity," published in 1857, contains the names of about 4,000 centenarians, and Dr. Van Oven has collected notices of 6,201. Of the latter we have the names, country, condition, and date of death, of 99 who reached the age of 130; of 37 who lived to be 140 years old; of 11 who reached 150; and of 17 who exceeded a century and a half. Henry Jenkins, a witness in an English court, swore to a hundred and fifty years' memory, and died at 169. The Countess of Desmond, of whom it is said that

"She lived to much more than a hundred and ten,
And died from the fall of a cherry-tree then,"

was known to Sir Walter Raleigh, though she had lived

in the time of Edward the Fourth. Lord Bacon says that she cut three sets of teeth, and lived to the age of 140,— the age of Galen. Lord Brougham had a great-aunt who died in 1789 at the age of 106. Allen's American Biographical Dictionary gives the names of more than 200 centenarians. Among them are Abraham Bogart, who died in Tennessee, in 1833, at the age of 118, and Francis Age, who died in Pennsylvania in 1767, aged 134. Some of our readers will recall Judge Basil Hamilton, the Kalamazoo centenarian, who died a few years ago at the age of 103. He was one of a family of twenty-three children, and had seventeen of his own. Mrs. Peggy Hatch died in November, 1878, in Waterville, Maine, at the age of ninetynine years and two months. Mrs. Moses Studley, of Bremen, Maine, is said to be nearly 106 years old. She was born May 25, 1774, and has not been sick for three years. According to the records of the town of York, Maine, Stephen Goodale, who died recently at the poor-house of the town, lived to the age of 118. He was a native of York, and had spent in the poor-house forty-two years. We will cite but two cases more, which, if they can be credited, are among the most extraordinary on record. January, 1865, two men died,- one in France, and the other in the United States,-whose united ages are said to have reached the startling number of two hundred and seventy years! The former, Antoine Sauvé, a native of Normandy, was an old artillery soldier, who attained to the age of 130 years; the other, Joseph Crele, who was born near Detroit in 1725, died at Caledonia, Wisconsin, at the age of 140. Sauvé's father fought against Marlborough at Ramilies, on May 3, 1706, and his elder brother, Peter Sauvé, helped Marshal Saxe to gain the bloody vic

tory of Fontenoy in 1745. Crele was seven years old at the birth of Washington, and fifty at the opening of the American Revolution, so that he might have claimed exemption, on the score of age, from military service. These cases, taken together, however incredible some of them may be, seem conclusive. Granting that many of them are not sufficiently authenticated, yet after the utmost allowance has been made for errors, misstatements, and wilful exaggerations, enough remain to establish the truth of ultra-longevity, even to many years over a century, beyond all rational doubt.

But what are the conditions of longevity, so far as we can gather them from the known cases? Are agricultural districts more favorable than manufacturing,- the fresh, open country than the crowded city,- mild climates than those whose skies are perpetually scowling? Statistics, well authenticated reports on sickness and mortality, say no; rural districts have, at most, the advantage of one in two hundred deaths above city districts, and one in five hundred above the town. Against the overcrowding, the bad air, the noise and excitement, and the liability to accident, in the cities, are set the better water, the greater variety of food, the better knowledge of the laws of health, the more accessible and skillful medical aid,― so that the advantages and disadvantages are nearly balanced. Hot climates have no superiority over cold; China is more unhealthy than Norway, Iceland, or Greenland. Is exercise a vital condition of longevity? It seems not, in view of the fact that a vicar cited by the London Quarterly Review, Rev. William Davies, reached 105, though his only exercise for the last thirty-five years was to slip one foot before another from room to room. Men have lived a

hundred years and upward who only taxed their physical powers to walk a hundred yards a day, from house to office and back. Is temperance, or total abstinence from alcohol, essential? The best answer to this question is the reply of the nonagenarian to the teetotaler, who, hunting for statistics to fortify his views, asked the aged man the secret of his long life? "I have heard," said the enemy of alcohol, "that you have been very regular in your habits; is it so?" The patriarch admitted the regularity, but added that it consisted in regularly chewing tobacco, “liquoring up" with the regularity of a steam-engine, and regularly going to bed drunk. Some of the toughest constitutions, resembling lignum-vitæ in their texture, have been possessed by old soakers who were hardly ever sober except when they were drunk. Daniel Bull M'Carthy, of Kerry, Ireland, who drank freely of undiluted rum and brandy during the last seventy years of his life, died in 1752 at the age of 111. George Kirton, of Oxnop Hall, Yorkshire, who died in 1764, aged 120, was also a hard drinker. William Hirst, a farm laborer, of Micklefield, Yorkshire, who died very old in 1853, considered rum the balm of his life, and spent for it all the money he received from the parish.

Is a proper diet a sine qua non of longevity? All writers on health denounce newly made, and especially hot, bread, and not a few discourage the use of tea and coffee. Yet Mr. Davies, the rector of whom we have spoken, breakfasted heartily on hot rolls, well buttered, ate hot roast meat at supper, and drank wine to the last, though never in excess. He suffered neither from gout, stone, paralysis, rheumatism, nor from any other of the besetting diseases of old age, but died in the full possession of all his faculties, mental and physical, but his eye