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The decline of life, and the retrospections of old age, furnish unequivocal tests of worthiness and unworthiness.  Happy is the man, who, after a well-spent life, can contemplate the rapid approach of his last year with the consciousness that, if he were born again, he could not, under all the circumstances of his worldly position, have done better, and who has inflicted no injuries for which it is too late to atone.  Wretched, on the contrary, is he, who is obliged to look back on a youth of idleness and profligacy, on a manhood of selfishness and sensuality, and on a career of hypocrisy, of insensibility, of concealed crime, and of injustice above the reach of law.  Visit both during the decay of their systems, observe their feelings and tempers, view the followers at their funerals, count the tears on their graves; and, after such a comparison, in good time make your own choice.

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Constant change is the feature of society.  The world is like a magic lantern, or the shifting scenes in a pantomime.  TEN YEARS convert the population of schools into men and women, the young into fathers and matrons, make and mar fortunes, and bury the last generation but one.  TWENTY YEARS convert infants into lovers, and fathers and mothers, render youth the operative generation, decide men’s fortunes and distinctions, convert active men into crawling drivellers, and bury all the preceding generation.  THIRTY YEARS raise an active generation from nonentity, change fascinating beauties into merely bearable old women, convert lovers into grandfathers and grandmothers, and bury the active generation, or reduce them to decrepitude and imbecility.  FORTY YEARS, alas! change the face of all society; infants are growing old, the bloom of youth and beauty has passed away, two active generations have been swept from the stage of life, names so cherished are forgotten, and unsuspected candidates for fame have started from the exhaustless womb of nature.  FIFTY YEARS! why should any desire to retain their affections from maturity for fifty years?  It is to behold a world which they do not know, and to which they are unknown; it is to live to weep for the generations passed away, for lovers, for parents, for children, for friends, in the grave; it is to see every thing turned upside down by the fickle hand of fortune, and the absolute despotism of time; it is, in a word, to behold the vanity of human life in all its varieties of display!

Social Philosophy.

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THE GATHERER

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles. 
SHAKSPEARE.

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SHERRY.

Commentators have puzzled themselves to find out Falstaff’s sherries sack:  there can be no doubt but that it was dry sherry, and the French word sec dry, corrupted into sack.  In a poem printed in 1619, sack and sherry are noted throughout as synonymous, every stanza of twelve ending—­