A silver wedding is better than the voice of the Epithalamium. And the most beautiful face that ever was is made yet more beautiful when there is laid upon it the reverence of silver hairs

There is a certain even-handed justice in Time; and for what he takes away he gives us something in return. He robs us of elasticity of limb and spirit, and in its place he brings tranquility and repose—the mild autumnal weather of the soul. He takes away Hope, but he gives us Memory. And the settled, unfluctuating atmosphere of middle age is no bad exchange for the stormful emotions, the passionate crises and suspenses, of the earlier day. The constitutional melancholy of the middle-aged man is a dim back-ground on which the pale flowers of life are brought out in the tenderest relief. Youth is the time for action, middle age for thought. In youth we hurriedly crop the herbage; in middle age, in a sheltered place, we chew the ruminative cud. In youth, red-handed, red-ankled, with songs and shoutings, we gather in the grapes; in middle age, under our own fig-tree, or in quiet gossip with a friend, we drink the wine free of all turbid lees. Youth is a lyrical poet, middle age a quiet essayist, fond of recounting experiences and of appending a moral to every incident. In youth the world is strange and unfamiliar, novel and exciting, everything wears the face and garb of a stranger; in middle age the world is covered over with reminiscence as with a garment-it is made homely with usage, it is made sacred with graves. The middle-aged man can go nowhere without treading the mark of his own footsteps. And in middle age, too—provided the man has been a good and an ordinarily happy one—along with his mental tranquility, there comes a corresponding sweetness of the moral atmosphere. He has seen the good and the evil that are in the world, the ups and the downs, the almost general desire of the men and the women therein to do the right thing if they could but see how—and he has learned to be uncensorious, humane; to attribute the

best motives to every action, and to be chary of imputing a sweeping and cruel blame. He has a quiet smile for the vain-glorious boast; a feeling of respect for shabby-genteel virtues; a pity for the thread-bare garments proudly worn, and for the napless hat glazed into more than pristine brilliancy from frequent brushing after rain. He would not be satirical for the world. He has no finger of scorn to point at anything under the sun. He has a hearty "Amen " for every good wish, and in the worst cases he leans to a verdict of Not Proven. And along with this pleasant blandness and charity, a certain grave, serious humor, " a smile on the lip and a tear in the eye," is noticeable frequently in middleaged persons—a phase of humor peculiar to that period of life, as the chrysanthemum to December. Pity lies at the bottom of it, just as pity lies, unsuspected, at the bottom of love. Perhaps this special quality of humor—with its sadness of tenderness, its mirth with the heart-ache, its gaiety growing out of deepest seriousness, like a crocus on a child's grave-never approaches more closely to perfection. than in some passages of Mr. Hawthorne's writings-who was a middle-aged man from earliest boyhood. And although middle-aged persons have lost the actual possession of youth, yet in virtue of this humor they can comprehend it, see all round it, enter imaginatively into every sweet and bitter of it. They wear the key Memory at their girdles, and they can open every door in the chamber of youth. And it is also in virtue of this peculiar humor that—Mr. Dickens's Little Nell to the contrary-it is only middle-aged persons who can, either as poets or artists, create for us a child. There is no more beautiful thing on earth than an old man's love for his granddaughter; more beautiful even— from the absence of all suspicion of direct personal bias or interest-than his love for his own daughter; and it is only the meditative, sad-hearted, middle-aged man who can creep into the heart of a child and interpret it, and show forth the new nature to us in the subtle cross lights of contrast

and suggestion. Imaginatively thus, the wrinkles of age become the dimples of infancy. Wordsworth was not a very young man when he held the colloquy with the little maid who insisted, in her childish logic, that she was one of seven. Mr. Hawthorne was not a young man when he painted "Pearl" by the side of the brook in the forest; and he was middle-aged and more when he drew "Pansie," the most exquisite child that lives in English words. And when speaking of middle age, of its peculiar tranquility and humor, why not tell of its peculiar beauty as well? Men and women make their own beauty or their own ugliness. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in one of his novels of a man "who was uglier than he had any business to be;" and, if we could but read it, every human being carries his life in his face, and is good-looking or the reverse as that life has been good or evil. On our features the fine chisels of thought and emotion are eternally at work. Beauty is not the monopoly of blooming young men and of white and pink maids. There is a slow-growing beauty which only comes to perfection in old age. Grace belongs to no period of life, and goodness improves the longer it exists. I have seen sweeter smiles on a lip of seventy than I ever saw on a lip of seventeen. There is the beauty of youth, and there is also the beauty of holiness—a beauty much more seldom met; and more frequently found in the arm-chair by the fire, with grandchildren around its knee, than in the ball-room or the promenade. Husband and wife who have fought the world side by side, who have made common stock of joy and sorrow, and aged together, are not unfrequently found curiously alike in personal appearance and in pitch and tone of voice-just as twin pebbles on the beach, exposed to the same tidal influences, are each others alter ergo. has gained a feminine something which brings his manhood into full relief. She has gained a masculine something which acts as a foil to her womanhood. Beautiful are they in life, these pale winter roses, and in death they will not be

He

divided. When Death comes, he will pluck not one, but both.

And in any case, to the old man, when the world becomes trite, the triteness arises not so much from a cessation as from a transference of interest. What is taken from this world is given to the next. The glory is in the east in the morning, it is in the west in the afternoon, and when it is dark the splendor is irradiating the realm of the under-world. He would only follow.

THE VOYAGE OF LIFE.

BY SAMUEL JOHNSON.

CCORDING to Seneca, "Life is a voyage, in the progress of which we are perpetually changing our scenes; we first leave childhood behind us, then youth. then the years of ripened manhood, then the better. and more pleasing part of old age."

The perusal of this passage having incited in me a train of reflections on the state of man, the incessant fluctuation of his wishes, the gradual change of his disposition to all external objects, and the thoughtlessness with which he floats along the stream of time, I sunk into a slumber amidst my meditations; and, on a sudden, found my ears filled with the tumult of labor, the shouts of alacrity, the shrieks of alarm, the whistle of winds, and the dash of waters.

My astonishment for a time repressed my curiosity; but soon recovering myself so far as to inquire whither we were going, and what was the cause of such clamor and confusion, I was told that they were launching out into the ocean of life; that we had already passed the straits of infancy, in which multitudes had perished, some by the weakness and fragility of their vessels, and more by the folly, perverseness, or negligence of those who undertook to steer them; and that we were now on the main sea, abandoned to the winds and billows, without any other means of security than the care of the pilot, whom it was always in our power to choose among great numbers that offered their direction and assistance.