[Footnote 1:  [elder]]

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No. 260.  Friday, December 28, 1711.  Steele.

  Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes.

  Hor.

  Mr.  SPECTATOR,

I am now in the Sixty fifth Year of my Age, and having been the greater Part of my Days a Man of Pleasure, the Decay of my Faculties is a Stagnation of my Life.  But how is it, Sir, that my Appetites are increased upon me with the Loss of Power to gratify them?  I write this, like a Criminal, to warn People to enter upon what Reformation they may please to make in themselves in their Youth, and not expect they shall be capable of it from a fond Opinion some have often in their Mouths, that if we do not leave our Desires they will leave us.  It is far otherwise; I am now as vain in my Dress, and as flippant if I see a pretty Woman, as when in my Youth I stood upon a Bench in the Pit to survey the whole Circle of Beauties.  The Folly is so extravagant with me, and I went on with so little Check of my Desires, or Resignation of them, that I can assure you, I very often meerly to entertain my own Thoughts, sit with my Spectacles on, writing Love-Letters to the Beauties that have been long since in their Graves.  This is to warm my Heart with the faint Memory of Delights which were once agreeable to me; but how much happier would my Life have been now, if I could have looked back on any worthy Action done for my Country?  If I had laid out that which I profused in Luxury and Wantonness, in Acts of Generosity or Charity?  I have lived a Batchelor to this Day; and instead of a numerous Offspring, with which, in the regular Ways of Life, I might possibly have delighted my self, I have only to amuse my self with the Repetition of Old Stories and Intrigues which no one will believe I ever was concerned in.  I do not know whether you have ever treated of it or not; but you cannot fall on a better Subject, than that of the Art of growing old.  In such a Lecture you must propose, that no one set his Heart upon what is transient; the Beauty grows wrinkled while we are yet gazing at her.  The witty Man sinks into a Humourist imperceptibly, for want of reflecting that all Things around him are in a Flux, and continually changing:  Thus he is in the Space of ten or fifteen Years surrounded by a new Set of People whose Manners are as natural to them as his Delights, Method of Thinking, and Mode of Living, were formerly to him and his Friends.  But the Mischief is, he looks upon the same kind of Errors which he himself was guilty of with an Eye of Scorn, and with that sort of Ill-will which Men entertain against each other for different Opinions:  Thus a crasie Constitution, and an uneasie Mind is fretted with vexatious Passions for young Mens doing foolishly what it is Folly to do at all.  Dear Sir, this is my present State of Mind; I hate those I should laugh at, and envy those I contemn.  The