men of confular rank and nearly of the fame age as myfelf) bewail their condition. The principal fubject of their complaint was, in the first place, that they were no longer capable of enjoying the fenfual gratifications; without which, in their estimation, life was of no value: and in the next, that they found themselves neglected by those who had formerly paid their court to them with the greatest attention. But they imputed their grievances, I think, to a wrong cause. For had they arisen merely from the circumstance of their age; they would have been common to myself and to every other man of the same advanced years. But the fact is much otherwise; and I have known many at that period of life, who paffed their time without the leaft repining: who neither regretted that they were releafed from the dominion of their paffions, nor had reason to think themfelves treated with disrespect by any of their connections. In fact, the true

grievance

i

grievance in all complaints of this kind, lies in the man and not in the age. They whose defires are properly regulated, and who have nothing morofe or petulant in their temper and manners, will find old-age, to say the least of it, is a state very easily to be indured : whereas unfubdued paffions, and a froward difpofition, will equally imbitter every feafon of human life.

LELIU S.

Your obfervations, Cato, are undoubtedly juft. Yet fome, perhaps, may be apt to say, that your ample poffeffions, together with the power and influence of your rank and character, have very much contributed to soften the inconveniencies of old-age and render it more than ufually easy to you: but that these are advantages which cannot poffibly fall to the lot of many.

CATO.

CATO.

I must acknowledge, that the circumflances you mention have some beneficial influence, but I can by no means admit, that the whole depends upon them. When a certain native of the paltry island of Seriphos," told Themiftocles, in an altercation which arose between them, that he was indebted for the luftre of his fame, not to the intrinsic splendor of his actions, but to the country in which he had the good fortune to be born; it may be fo,'

replied the Athenian general, for if I had received my birth at Seriphos, I 'could have had no opportunity of producing my talents: but give me leave to tell you, that yours would never have made a figure though you had 'been born in Athens.' The fame fentiment is justly applicable to the case in question for although, it must be confeffed that old-age under the preffure of

extreme

extreme indigence, cannot poffibly prove an easy state, not even to a wife and virtuous mind; yet without those effential qualities it must neceffarily prove the reverse, although it fhould be accompanied with every external advantage. Believe me, my young friends, the beft and fureft guard against the inconveniencies of old-age, is to cultivate in each preceding period the principles of moral fcience, and uniformly to exercise those virtues it prescribes. The good feeds which you fhall thus have fown in the former feafons of life, will in the winter of your days, be wonderfully productive of the noblest and most valuable fruit: valuable, not only as a poffeffion which will remain with you even to your latest moments, (though indeed that circumstance alone is a very confiderable recommendation) but also as a conscious retrospect on a long life, marked with an uninterrupted series of laudable and beneficent actions, afford a perpetual

perpetual source of the fweetest and most exquifite fatisfaction.

When I was very young I conceived as strong an affection for Quintus Maximus, (the celebrated General who recovered Tarentum) as if we had been of equal years." There was a dignity in the deportment of this excellent old man which was tempered with fingular politenefs and affability of manners: and time had wrought no fort of alteration in his amiable qualities. He was not, it is true, at a time of life which could properly be called infirm age, when I first began to cultivate his friendship; but he was certainly, however, advanced in years: for I was not born till the year before his firft confulate." In his fourth, I ferved a very young man in the army he commanded at Capua : and five years afterwards I was his Quæftor at Tarentum. From that post I fucceeded to the Edileship; and four years after, in the confulate of TudiC

tanus