118 HUMAN LONGEVITY. 



passage of this psalm (so admirably translated by Lord 

 Bacon), we have in a few words the touching picture, true 

 to every time, of the decrepitude and other ills which affect 

 life when prolonged beyond the average term the Creator 

 has assigned to it. 



The records of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Persia, though 

 not expressing the fact to us in such positive forms, yet 

 concur in furnishing the same general inference. The 

 several periods of individual life are denoted as we now 

 denote them ; and generations succeed one another, as far as 

 we can interpret the ancient monuments of the dead, under 

 an equal and similar law. The pyramids were the tombs of 

 monarchs who, as an old writer says, ' astonished Heaven by 

 their audacities,' but whose term of existence would seem to 

 have been strictly commensurate with our own. 



As we descend to the days of Greece and Eome, the notices 

 derived from history and other kindred sources become more 

 explicit and particular. The result we may affirm to be the 

 same ; testified to us both in the mean term of life as we have 

 denned it, and not less remarkably in those deviations by 

 excess, which in themselves furnish a sort of reflex proof as 

 to the average ; a manner of verifying the mean number 

 more valuable than on first sight might appear. Though 

 we still cannot authenticate particular facts in these periods 

 with the same assurance as by the statistical tables of our 

 own time, yet neither Greeks nor Romans were wanting in 

 methods of assigning exact date, even to the events of private 

 life, through the popular and political institutions which are 

 so deeply embedded in their history. The Olympiads and 

 public festivals of Greece, and the Consular Fasti of Eome 

 gave time, as well as name, to numerous family and personal 

 occurrences. The ' calidus juventd consule Planco' of 

 Horace, is a familiar instance of the mode of dating events 

 through this greatest and most lasting institution of the 



