“It may be by the calendar of years
    You are the elder man; but ’tis the sun
    Of knowledge on the mind’s dial shining bright,
    And chronicling deeds and thoughts, that makes true time.”

And yet withal life is very unhappy, whether we live amongst the grumbling captains of the clubs, who are ever seeking and not finding promotion; amongst the struggling authors and rising artists who never rise; or among the young men who are full of riches, titles, places, and honor, who have every wish fulfilled, and are miserable because they have nothing to wish for.  Thus the young Romans killed themselves after the death of their emperor, not for grief, not for affection, not even for the fashion of suicide, which grew afterwards prevalent enough, but from the simple weariness of doing every thing over and over again.  Old age has passed such stages as these, landed on a safer shore, and matriculated in a higher college, in a purer air.  We sigh not for impossibilities; we cry not: 

    “Bring these anew, and set me once again
       In the delusion of life’s infancy;
    I was not happy, but I knew not then
       That happy I was never doom’d to be.”

We know that we are not happy.  We know that life, perhaps, was not given us to be continuously comfortable and happy.  We have been behind the scenes, and know all the illusions; but when we are old we are far too wise to throw life away for mere ennui.  With Dandolo, refusing a crown at ninety-six, winning battles at ninety-four; with Wellington, planning and superintending fortifications at eighty; with Bacon and Humboldt, students to the last gasp; with wise old Montaigne, shrewd in his grey-beard wisdom and loving life, even in the midst of his fits of gout and colic—­Age knows far too much to act like a sulky child.  It knows too well the results and the value of things to care about them; that the ache will subside, the pain be lulled, the estate we coveted be worth little; the titles, ribbons, gewgaws, honors, be all more or less worthless.  “Who has honor?  He that died o’ Wednesday!” Such a one passed us in the race, and gained it but to fall.  We are still up and doing; we may be frosty and shrewd, but kindly.  We can wish all men well; like them, too, so far as they may be liked, and smile at the fuss, bother, hurry, and turmoil, which they make about matters which to us are worthless dross.  The greatest prize in the whole market—­in any and in every market—­success, is to the old man nothing.  He little cares who is up and who is down; the present he lives in and delights in.  Thus, in one of those admirable comedies in which Robson acted, we find the son a wanderer, the mother’s heart nearly broken, the father torn and broken by a suspicion of his son’s dishonesty, but the grandfather all the while concerned only about his gruel and his handkerchief.  Even the pains and troubles incident to his state visit the old man lightly.  Because Southey sat for months in his library, unable to read or touch the books he loved, we are not to infer that he was unhappy.  If the stage darkens as the curtain falls, certain it also is that the senses grow duller and more blunted.  “Don’t cry for me, my dear,” said an old lady undergoing an operation; “I do not feel it.”