service at eighty-five as he was at
forty, when Moses sent him out to spy the land of Canaan. But he was, no
doubt, lusty and vigorous for his years, and ready to smite the
Canaanites hip and thigh, and drive them out, and take possession of
their land, as he did forthwith, when Moses gave him leave.

Grand old men there were, three thousand years ago! But not all
octogenarians were like Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. Listen to poor old
Barzillai, and hear him piping: "I am this day fourscore years old; and
can I discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste what I eat or
what I drink? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing
women? Wherefore, then, should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord
the king?" And poor King David was worse off than this, as you all
remember, at the early age of seventy.

Thirty centuries do not seem to have made any very great difference in
the extreme limits of life. Without pretending to rival the alleged
cases of life prolonged beyond the middle of its second century, such as
those of Henry Jenkins and Thomas Parr, we can make a good showing of
centenarians and nonagenarians. I myself remember Dr. Holyoke, of Salem,
son of a president of Harvard College, who answered a toast proposed in
his honor at a dinner given to him on his hundredth birthday.

"Father Cleveland," our venerated city missionary, was born June 21,
1772, and died June 5, 1872, within a little more than a fortnight of his
hundredth birthday. Colonel Perkins, of Connecticut, died recently after
celebrating his centennial anniversary.

Among nonagenarians, three whose names are well known to Bostonians, Lord
Lyndhurst, Josiah Quincy, and Sidney Bartlett, were remarkable for
retaining their faculties in their extreme age. That patriarch of our
American literature, the illustrious historian of his country, is still
with us, his birth dating in 1800.

Ranke, the great German historian, died at the age of ninety-one, and
Chevreul, the eminent chemist, at that of a hundred and two.

Some English sporting characters have furnished striking examples of
robust longevity. In Gilpin's "Forest Scenery" there is the story of one
of these horseback heroes. Henry Hastings was the name of this old
gentleman, who lived in the time of Charles the First. It would be hard
to find a better portrait of a hunting squire than that which the Earl of
Shaftesbury has the credit of having drawn of this very peculiar
perso