em himself;
otherwise there is doubtless malice and envy in the case. The greatest
act of the Emperor Charles V. was that when, in imitation of some of the
ancients of his own quality, confessing it but reason to strip ourselves
when our clothes encumber and grow too heavy for us, and to lie down when
our legs begin to fail us, he resigned his possessions, grandeur, and
power to his son, when he found himself failing in vigour, and steadiness
for the conduct of his affairs suitable with the glory he had therein
acquired:

"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat."

["Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing in the lists,
the spectators laugh."--Horace, Epist., i., I, 8.]

This fault of not perceiving betimes and of not being sensible of the
feebleness and extreme alteration that age naturally brings both upon
body and mind, which, in my opinion, is equal, if indeed the soul has not
more than half, has lost the reputation of most of the great men in the
world. I have known in my time, and been intimately acquainted with
persons of great authority, whom one might easily discern marvellously
lapsed from the sufficiency I knew they were once endued with, by the
reputation they had acquired in their former years, whom I could
heartily, for their own sakes, have wished at home at their ease,
discharged of their public or military employments, which were now grown
too heavy for their shoulders. I have formerly been very familiar in a
gentleman's house, a widower and very old, though healthy and cheerful
enough: this gentleman had several daughters to marry and a son already
of ripe age, which brought upon him many visitors, and a great expense,
neither of which well pleased him, not only out of consideration of
frugality, but yet more for having, by reason of his age, entered into a
course of life far differing from ours. I told him one day a little
boldly, as I used to do, that he would do better to give us younger folk
room, and to leave his principal house (for he had but that well placed
and furnished) to his son, and himself retire to an estate he had hard
by, where nobody would trouble his repose, seeing he could not otherwise
avoid being importuned by us, the condition of his children considered.
He took my advice afterwards, and found an advantage in so doing.

I do not mean that a man should so instal them as not to reserve to
h