4 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nal des Savants.' He always enjoys good health, and 'eats more than 

 I do,' says M. Chevreul, /s/s." His temperance grew out of a repug- 

 nance which he contracted in youth to wines and liquors, and extends 

 to smoking. 



His favorite topic is colors, respecting which, our correspondent 

 says, " he would insist on sitting up in bed and giving a demonstration 

 on the propagation of colors. His strong point was that the 'colors 

 are in us, and the cause in the things we look at' (de /tors). Although 

 he had talked a great deal during the day, there was no stopping him 

 when once the started on the color question, or gettiug him to change 

 the subject ; and when we rose to leave, he protested that we were going 

 a\\ay because his exposition wearied us." He is as earnest and enthu- 

 siastic a student yet as if he had another hundred years before him. 

 " No man, perhaps, has seen his country pass through so many revo- 

 lutions, and has lived under so many regimes as M. Chevreul. He re- 

 members Louis XVI. His recollections of the Revolution and the 

 Directoire are clear, though he was not then at Paris. He can call up 

 pictures of the glory and the dignity of the First Empire. He has lived 

 under the First Restoration, the Hundred Days, the Restoration of 

 1815, the Legitimist rule of 1830, the Republic of 1848, the Second 

 Empire of 1852, and the Third Republic — in all eleven regimes, which 

 is tolerably good for one lifetime." 



The lesson has been drawn from M. Chevreul's life of what one 

 writer styles " the physical wholesomeness of sustained labor." Cases 

 of extreme longevity are usually found either among persons who live 

 in almost complete inactivity of mind and are thus subject to no wear 

 whatever from their nervous and intellectual faculties, or else among 

 those who spend their lives in constant, vigorous thought. Persons of 

 the class between these, who learn and pursue some business which in 

 time becomes largely a matter of routine and ceases to call out exer- 

 tion of the powers, usually die early, or at a moderate old age. Hence, 

 the wonderful brightness and activity which we sometimes admire 

 among very old persons, is not so wonderful after all, but is a part of 

 their old age, and one of the causes that have enabled them to enjoy 

 it. And the general rule is sustained, in the case of M. Chevreul, as 

 in the ease of numerous other men who have served the world or are 

 serving it at ages far beyond threescore and ten, that "the harmoni- 

 ous development of all the many-sided aspects of man is the most 

 conducive to the health of the individual, and that the training of the 

 brain may be as valuable as the training of the muscles." 



