welcome arrival in 1688, one of the gayest and most lively courtiers that I saw in the whole party, was SERJEANT MAYNARD, then about my present age. I observed the kindness with which the Prince complimented him on his period of life (he was then ninety), and on his having outlived all the lawyers of his time: "I might (replied the old man) have outlived the law too, if your Highness had not arrived." His spirit was just the same, as when some years before, he so ably opposed the bill for constructive treason; and at the advanced age of ninety, he was not deemed unfit to be placed at the head of the High Court of Chancery, in times extremely critical and difficult; nor was he found unequal to the pressure of business which then took place. Neither did our ex

cellent friend LORD SOMERS shew less vigour in projecting the union in 1708, than he displayed twenty years before in the establishment and recognition of the title of their Majesties, and in the able support which he gave to the aet of convention or even in a latter period, at the close of the rebellion in 1715, when under the pressure of great bodily infirmity, but retaining his own native vigour of mind, he reprobated those severe measures against the rebel Lords, which have had the effect of converting Tories into Jacobites; and exclaimed to the Minister, 66 Do you then mean to "revive the proscriptions of Marius and

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Sylla, and to drive the Tories into the "arms of the Pretender, and dye the

royal ermine with blood ?"-To notice other examples, your predecessor,

Bishop of London, (I mean Dr. RobinSON), lived to his ninety-third year, and always preserved a considerable share of health; and SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN was in his eightieth year when he finished your cathedral of Saint Paul's. He died at the age of ninety-one, but not till he had completed other great works. MR. WALLER, at the age of eighty-two, is said to have lost none of his intellectual powers: and the immortal NEWTON, the prodigy of our age, who began his philosophical career before one-and-twenty, and had continued it with incessant labour for more than half a century, was in his eighty-third year very busy in improving his Chronology; and afterwards, averse as he had always been to contest and dispute, yet when he thought the cause of truth and the interests of science

required it, he entered the lists of controversy, and continued the literary war to his death, with all the warmth and enthusiasm of a young disputant.

BISHOP GIBSON. But observe, brother, that Sir Isaac Newton's was the solitary occupation of mere intellect. It did not require those resources and that peculiar firmness of mind, which the concerns of public business demand, and which old age does not in general possess.

BISHOP HOUGH. Take then the example of Corsini, the present Pope, CLEMENT THE TWELFTH. He was near four-score when he succeeded to the Papal Chair; he has now held it for ten years, and has not lost any of that popularity, which he at first acquired, by

abolishing several improvident taxes, and putting an end to the system of oppression, that Cardinal Coscia had established under his predecessor.-Or if activity in the field be more decisive, what do you say to MARSHALL VILLARS? who, after having quitted his military career for many years, has lately taken the command of the army in Italy, at the age of four score; and in a short, active, and glorious campaign, has driven the imperial army out of the Milanese territory, and rescued that country from an unexampled severity of oppression. I have a respect for a good pun; and I love the pleasantness of this old man, who at the siege of Milan, being asked his age, could answer, "Dans peu de Jours, j'aurois MIL-AN."