ted, holding the rest of mankind, is going down with
all on board. It is no wonder that there should be such when we remember
what have been the teachings of the priesthood through long series of
ignorant centuries. Every age has to shape the Divine image it worships
over again,--the present age and our own country are busily engaged in
the task at this time. We unmake Presidents and make new ones. This is
an apprenticeship for a higher task. Our doctrinal teachers are unmaking
the Deity of the Westminster Catechism and trying to model a new one,
with more of modern humanity and less of ancient barbarism in his
composition. If Jonathan Edwards had lived long enough, I have no doubt
his creed would have softened into a kindly, humanized belief.

Some twenty or thirty years ago, I said to Longfellow that certain
statistical tables I had seen went to show that poets were not a
long-lived race. He doubted whether there was anything to prove they
were particularly short-lived. Soon after this, he handed me a list
he had drawn up. I cannot lay my hand upon it at this moment, but I
remember that Metastasio was the oldest of them all. He died at the
age of eighty-four. I have had some tables made out, which I have every
reason to believe are correct so far as they go. From these, it appears
that twenty English poets lived to the average age of fifty-six years
and a little over. The eight American poets on the list averaged
seventy-three and a half, nearly, and they are not all dead yet. The
list including Greek, Latin, Italian, and German poets, with American
and English, gave an average of a little over sixty-two years. Our young
poets need not be alarmed. They can remember that Bryant lived to be
eighty-three years old, that Longfellow reached seventy-five and Halleck
seventy-seven, while Whittier is living at the age of nearly eighty-two.
Tennyson is still writing at eighty, and Browning reached the age of
seventy-seven.

Shall a man who in his younger days has written poetry, or what passed
for it, continue to attempt it in his later years? Certainly, if it
amuses or interests him, no one would object to his writing in verse as
much as he likes. Whether he should continue to write for the public is
another question. Poetry is a good deal a matter of heart-beats, and the
circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are
less supple; the arteries are more or less "ossified." Something like
these changes