LONGEVITY. 87 



Moet, left his home at this time, and went to Jersey, 

 where he resided until the German occupation termin- 

 ated, when he returned to his ancestral home and died 

 at the patriarchal age of eighty-two years. 



I think to live to such a ripe age, as did Mr. Moet, is 

 less rare now than it used to be. Sir George Cornewall 

 Lewis asserted that there are no thoroughly authenti- 

 cated cases of centenarians ; but that there are cases of 

 undoubted certainty I am convinced, and for one of 

 them I can personally vouch. An oM lady, a Mrs. 

 Grace, died in the year 1877, who was certainly born in 

 1776 ; she had been a Miss Rickford before her 

 marriage, sister to William Rickford, the banker, and 

 Member of Parliament for the Borough. Born in the 

 town, baptized there, married there, she lived all her life 

 at Aylesbury, and there can be no doubt but that she was 

 the identical lady whose birth and baptism in 1776 ap- 

 peared in the parish registry. Had she been a daughter 

 of some poor person, such errors as Sir George Lewis 

 indicated might have been possible, but she was known 

 to every one, a lady moving always in a good position. 

 On Mrs. Grace attaining her hundredth year, I took her 

 a bouquet of choice flowers, culled from my greenhouse, 

 and found her perfectly sensible and cheerful ; only her 

 eyesight had failed her. 



I can myself well remember seeing the Hon. T. 

 Grenvillc, great-uncle to the late Duke of Buckingham, 

 passing through Aylesbury in the year 1 835, on a visit 

 to Stowe : he was fond of relating that when a boy at 

 Eton, he and some companions used to congregate 

 round an old man to hear him tell stories which his 



