IS OLD AGE TRINQUIL ?

Otago Witness, Issue 1892, 15 May 1890, Page 25

IS OLD AGE TRINQUIL ?

Does old age bring any special tranquillity of its own ? We greatly doubt it. Not unfrequently it brings back a restlessness peculiarly its own. " Locksley Hall Fifty Years After " is hardly less restless than the " Locksley Hall " of the Poet - Laureate's youth, though the latter poem is restless with the sense of something that has vanished from the social life around him which he cherished, and the earlier poem with the sense that something has not yet come into it, for which he craves. Wordsworth's old age was certainly not so tranquil as his middle life, and Goethe's was not so tranquil as his childhood, which in its dignity and rather formal precision it resembled much more than it resembled his middle life. Victor Hugo's old age again was not remarkable for its tranquillity. Some of his most excitable and hysterical moods were moods which came upon him in old age. And to pass to a very different region, no one would say that Mr Gladstone's old age is especially tranquil, or that Lord Palmerston's old age was especially tranquil, or that M. Thierfe' old age was especially tranquil. Of course, it will be replied that political life is not favourable to tranquillity, but then, if old age is a season of great tranquillity, why do not the old retire from political life ? Again, is there any evidence that Mr Darwin's old age was more tranquil than his maturity ? We should say that it was less so — more conscious of the inadequacy of a merely scientific life, and yet less capable of interest in any less inadequate life. — Exchange.