ndolo, born at the beginning of the eleventh century, who lost his
eyesight when a young man, was nevertheless subsequently raised to the
highest office in the republic, managed successfully to conduct various
wars, and at the advanced age of eighty-three, in alliance with the
French, besieged and captured Constantinople. Fontenelle was as
gay-spirited at ninety-eight as in his fortieth year, and the
philosopher Newton worked away at his tasks at the age of eighty-three
with the same ardor that animated his middle age. Cornaro was as happy
at ninety as at fifty, and in far better health at the age of
ninety-five than he had enjoyed at thirty.

"These cases all tend to show the value and benefits to be derived from
an actively cultivated brain in making a long life one of comfort and
of usefulness to its owner. The brain and spirits need never grow old,
even if our bodies will insist on getting rickety and in falling by the
wayside. But an abstemious life will drag even the old body along to
centenarian limits in a tolerable state of preservation and usefulness.
The foregoing list can be lengthened out with an indefinite number of
names, but it is sufficiently long to show what good spirits and an
active brain will do to lighten up the weight of old age. When we
contemplate the Doge Dandolo at eighty-three animating his troops from
the deck of his galley, and the brave old blind King of Bohemia falling
in the thickest of the fray at Crecy, it would seem as it there was no
excuse for either physical, mental, or moral decrepitude short of the
age of four score and ten."

Emperors and Kings, in short, the great ones of the earth, pay the
penalty of their power by associate worriment and care. In ancient
history we can only find a few rulers who attained four score, and this
is equally the case in modern times. In the whole catalogue of the
Roman and German Emperors, reckoning from Augustus to William I, only
six have attained eighty years. Gordian, Valerian, Anastasius, and
Justinian were octogenarians, Tiberius was eighty-eight at his death,
and Augustus Caesar was eighty-six. Frederick the Great, in spite of
his turbulent life, attained a rare age for a king, seventy-six.
William I seems to be the only other exception.

Of 300 Popes who may be counted, no more than five attained the age of
eighty. Their mode of life, though conducive to longevity in the minor
offices of the Church, seems to be overbalanced by the cares