214 ^'De Senectufer 



and rowing, and played with the straightest bat I ever saw. 

 I never shall forget his horror when a boy in the hunting 

 scene in ^n. lY. (when, by-the-bye, Mr. ^neas changed 

 his quarry and found himself with Lady Dido in the 

 summer-house), in which the boy Ascanius is described on 

 his pony cracking his whip, construed '' insonuitque flagelW 

 " played on his pipe," taking a shot ixtflacjello as " flageolet.'' 

 I forget what was the eventuality, but I hope that boy was 

 flogged for not using his dictionary, and for the awful" 

 murder of Mr. Virgil his poem. 



It is about a green old age that I am talking now, and 

 the question is, who are the men who attain it as a rule ? 

 I believe the athlete and the active man of business have 

 the best chance, provided that they lead a sober life. We 

 all know that, as a rule, the old shepherds on the downs 

 are like the donkeys and never die. This question of old 

 age was discussed in some of the papers when Mr. Budd 

 the cricketer and sportsman, died a few years ^ince, aged 

 ninety, also when Lord Lyndhurst died at a very gr'eat 

 age ; and the average age of the old " B eleven " (an Eleven of 

 cricketers, em-olled by Lord Frederick Beauclerck), whose 

 names began with B, of which Mr. Budd was one, added up 

 after theii- deaths, came to over eighty years each. We 

 all remember the jaunty way in which Lord Palmerston 

 jogged down to the Derby, and the light quick step with 

 which the late Lord Campbell and the late Lord Chelmsford 

 used to walk down to the court of a morning, and, by-the- 

 bye, the present Lord Chief Justice of England is not the 

 slowest man on his feet. And we remember how Arch- 

 bishop Sumner, when an octogenarian, as upright as a 

 dart stepped out on his way to the House of Lords; that 

 grand old man who, in his old age, wrote seven volumes on 

 the Epistles, and at his death- sent a presentation copy to 

 every incumbent in his diocese ; working on the quiet to 



