age is reached, all this is over and done with, partly
because the blood runs cooler and the senses are no longer so easily
allured; partly because experience has shown the true value of things
and the futility of pleasure, whereby illusion has been gradually
dispelled, and the strange fancies and prejudices which previously
concealed or distorted a free and true view of the world, have been
dissipated and put to flight; with the result that a man can now get
a juster and clearer view, and see things as they are, and also in a
measure attain more or less insight into the nullity of all things on
this earth.

It is this that gives almost every old man, no matter how ordinary his
faculties may be, a certain tincture of wisdom, which distinguishes
him from the young. But the chief result of all this change is the
peace of mind that ensues--a great element in happiness, and, in fact,
the condition and essence of it. While the young man fancies that
there is a vast amount of good things in the world, if he could only
come at them, the old man is steeped in the truth of the Preacher's
words, that _all things are vanity_--knowing that, however gilded the
shell, the nut is hollow.

In these later years, and not before, a man comes to a true
appreciation of Horace's maxim: _Nil admirari._ He is directly and
sincerely convinced of the vanity of everything and that all the
glories of the world are as nothing: his illusions are gone. He is
no more beset with the idea that there is any particular amount of
happiness anywhere, in the palace or in the cottage, any more than he
himself enjoys when he is free from bodily or mental pain. The worldly
distinctions of great and small, high and low, exist for him no
longer; and in this blissful state of mind the old man may look down
with a smile upon all false notions. He is completely undeceived, and
knows that whatever may be done to adorn human life and deck it out in
finery, its paltry character will soon show through the glitter of its
surroundings; and that, paint and be jewel it as one may, it remains
everywhere much the same,--an existence which has no true value except
in freedom from pain, and is never to be estimated by the presence of
pleasure, let alone, then, of display.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Horace, _Epist_. I. 12, I-4.]

Disillusion is the chief characteristic of old age; for by that time
the fictions are gone which gave life its charm and spurred on the
mind to activity