you like with him," exclaimed M. de Mirabeau,
"but leave him free." The president then said
to the old man, " The assembly is afraid lest
the length of the sitting should fatigue you,
and therefore you may now withdraw. May
you long enjoy the sight of your country become
entirely free."

Napoleon Bonaparte, when First Consul,
decorated two centenarians with the medal of the
Legion of Honour, before a large assembly in
the nave of the Hotel of the Invalides. The First
Consul placed them near himself, and took
them home to dine with him.

The restored Bourbons did not of course
forget the effect of these scenes upon an imagina
tive nation. On the 25th of August, 1822, the
equestrian statue of Louis the Fourteenth was
inaugurated upon the Place of Victories. In
front of the statue, an arm-chair was placed for
Pierre Huet, the Father of the French army.
He was dressed in the uniform of the regiment
in which he had served, the Royal Cavalry.
The expression of his countenance was venerable
and handsome, and he wore a long white beard,
and his voice was strong and sonorous. In
his hundred and seventeenth year he had
preserved all his faculties; and his conversation
was very agreeable. The Prefect of the Seine,
on presenting him with a cross of honour in the
name of Louis the Eighteenth, said:

"Contemporary of Louis the Fourteenth
receive this symbol of honour! The king decorates
in you the Father of the French army. Born a
subject of the great king, you have seen the
generations succeed each other, and you are a witness
that his reign, like his glory, is immortal."

The old man said he felt deeply an occurrence
so glorious, in such a long life. Then walking
across the place with a firm step to the platform
of the ministers and marshals, he received their
congratulations: " My sons, my dear sons,"
he said, " live long, live as long as I have done,
to love and serve France." These shows of respect
for age are characteristic of the art of governing
by scenes.

Our own registrars regularly publish reports
and population tables which tell us how many
centenarians have recently died, and how many
were in a certain year alive among us. For
instance, a newly published blue-book says there
were of us English folks, in the year 1861,
including us all, babies and grandpapas, eighteen
million nine hundred and fifty-four thousand
four hundred and forty-four. There were of
us, fifty men and one hundred and twenty-seven
women, over a hundred years old. The Welsh
folk numbered in that year one million one
hundred and eleven thousand seven hundred
and eighty; and five men and nineteen women
among them were over a century old. London,
with more than twice the population of Wales,
had three fewer centenarians; or twenty-one to
twenty-four. But these statements, notwithstanding
their official authority, and although
they are quoted by writers and orators as if they
were their articles of faith, are somewhat deficient
in logical weight. The evidence for them is mere
hearsay. The registrars tabulate whatever they
are told; their informants write down what
they are told; and thus hearsay is added to
hearsay—none of the parties knowing in general
anything accurate about the matter; for registries
of baptism are rarely consulted, and do not in
clude records of birth, so that he is a wise child
who knows his own birthday. Nobody in
England and Wales even pretended in 1861 to be a
single decade over a hundred years old.

Paragraphs are perpetually appearing in the
newspapers recording the deaths of centenarians.
For several years I used occasionally to write to
the newspapers which circulated these stories
suggesting how desirable it would be to obtain
and publish proofs of the dates of birth or
baptism; but in no instance were these forthcoming.
I have personally known three centenarians and
several nonogenarians; but I have not yet
found the wise child among them who could
prove the date of his birth or baptism. An old
Scotch woman, whom I knew in 1833, in Ellon,
Aberdeenshire, could only prove her age by say
ing she well remembered seeing the soldiers
marching north to fight the battle of Culloden,
in 1745, " when she was a gay bit lassie o' ten
or twal." A Scotch shipowner, believed to be
ninety-two, whom I knew twenty years ago, was
always led by hearing my name to pour forth
the vials of his anti-patronage wrath upon the
memory of an illustrious namesake of mine who
led the unpopular side in the Kirk Courts of
ninety or a hundred years ago; but he disliked
talking about his age, said nothing respecting
the date of his birth, and cut the subject short
by declaring wearily and querulously, " I
sometimes think God has forgotten me." An
Aberdeenshire woman of ninety-three, began life as a
servant in the household of my great-grand-
father, and, after spending sixty years in service
in Doctors' Commons, London, returned to her
native place to live upon her savings. My
grandfather and father she knew little or nothing
about, but her eyes sparkled and her voice
laughed when she told tales of her first master,—
what a grave man he was when standing in his
Sunday's best and broad bonnet as an elder
beside the begging plate. As for the date
of her birth, I might find it in the books
of the parish; she only knew what she had
been told. A man in his ninety-seventh
year, who is resident on the south coast of
England, once gave me an insight into the
changes which may happen to a man who has
never left the spot on which he was born during
the lapse of a century. Seeing him looking
sadly at the sea, I asked him "what he was
looking at?" and he said to me, " I am looking
where I was born." " What! were you born
in the sea?" " Yes, there, where the sea is
now, in a house which the sea has swept away.
The well was hereabouts, somewhere, but I
cannot see it now. They change everything. The
parish itself has been taken away with all its
books." And this is literally true, for the
parish church is a ruin of crumbling walls, and
the parish contains but one inhabitant, who is