EUTHANASIA. 469 



out. After this sort of evidence, it will be impossible, I think, 

 to refuse credence to this very old man's tale. 



Is growing old an art to be acquired? is it a matter of 

 eating, drinking, and avoiding? These are amongst the 

 questions that people, desirous of growing very old, will not 

 fail to propose to themselves. And thus may we reply: 

 Viability, or the capacity of living long, wrote somebody, is 

 an inheritance. Like talent, it may be cultivated ; like talent, 

 it may be perverted ; but it exists independent of all culti- 

 vation. Some men have a talent for long life. Longevity 

 tends to be hereditary. M. Charles Lejoncourt, in his Galerie 

 des Centenaires, publishes some curious examples. He cites 

 a day-labourer, who died at one hundred and eight; his 

 father having lived to one hundred and four, and his grand- 

 father to one hundred and eight. His daughter, then living, 

 had arrived at eighty. In another page of M. Lejoncourt's 

 treatise, we find a saddler whose grandfather died at one 

 hundred and twelve, his father at one hundred and thirteen, 

 and he himself at one hundred and fifteen. This man, two 

 years before his death, being asked by Louis XIV. how he 

 had managed to live so long, 'Sire,' said he, 'by acting on 

 two principles since I was fifty ; the principles of keeping my 

 wine-cellar open and my heart shut.' 



A more surprising illustration of hereditary longevity is 

 furnished by John Golembiewski, a Pole. In 1846 this man 

 was living, aged one hundred and two. His father died at 

 one hundred and twenty-one, his grandfather at one hundred 

 and thirty. This Pole had been eighty years a common 

 soldier. He had served in thirty- five campaigns under Na- 

 poleon ; had even survived the terrible Russian campaign in 

 spite of five wonnds. 



We perceive, then, that capacity for living to very old 

 age tends to be hereditary. It is a talent, so to speak, and, 

 like other talents, it may be developed or abused. If the 

 question be proposed, By what regimen longevity may be 



