y impaired bodily
powers; and seldom is it possible to live to so great an age with the
powers of enjoyment and of unabated interest in the lives of others
still retained.

She never returned to Ireland after her widowhood, but was able, up to
the end of her life, to pay a yearly autumn visit to her beloved
Scotland. And so, under the rolling Sussex downs, amidst familiar
woodlands and villages, full of years, and surrounded by the lore of
all those who knew her, the long day closed.

I think that there is a passage in the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs
which says: "Her children rise up and call her blessed."

I have reached my appointed limits, leaving unsaid one-half of the
things I had wished to narrate. Reminiscences come crowding in
unbidden, and, like the flickering lights of the Will-o'-the-wisp, they
tend to lead the wayfarer far astray from the path he had originally
traced out for himself. "Jack-o'-lanthorn" is proverbially a fickle
guide to follow, and should I have succumbed to his lure, I can only
proffer my excuses, and plead in extenuation that sixty years is such a
long road to re-travel that an occasional deviation into a by-path by
elderly feet may perhaps be forgiven.

Charles Kingsley, in the "Water-Babies", has put some very touching
lines into the mouth of the old school-dame in Vendale, lines which
come home with pathetic force to persons of my time of life.

"When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad
And every dog his day.

"When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The old and spent among:
God grant you find one face there
You loved when all was young."

I protest indignantly against the idea that all the wheels are run
down; nor are the trees yet brown, for kindly autumn, to soften us to
the inevitable passing of summer, touches the trees with her magic
wand, and forthwith they blaze with crimson and russet-gold, pale-gold
and flaming copper-red.

In the mellow golden sunshine of the still October days it is sometimes
difficult to realise that the glory of the year has passed beyond
recall, though the sunshine has no longer th