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142 that mere muscular strength, after all, is not much wanted for our happiness: that there are always comparative degrees of strength; and that an old man need no more make himself unhappy because he has not the strength of a young man, than the latter does because he has not the strength of a bull or an elephant. It was very well for the great wrestler Milo to be able to carry an ox round the arena on his shoulders; but, on the whole, a man does not often want to walk about with a bullock on his back. The old are said, too, to lose their memory. Cato thinks they can remember pretty well all that they care to remember. They are not apt to forget who owes them money; and "I never knew an old man forget," he says, "where he had buried his gold." Then as to the pleasures of the senses, which age undoubtedly diminishes our power of enjoying. "This," says Cato, "is really a privilege, not a deprivation; to be delivered from the yoke of such tyrants as our passions to feel that we have 'got our discharge' from such a warfare-is a blessing for which men ought rather to be grateful to their advancing years." And the respect and authority which is by general consent conceded to old age, is a pleasure more than equivalent to the vanished pleasures of youth.

There is one consideration which the author has not placed amongst his four chief disadvantages of growing old,—which, however, he did not forget, for he notices it incidentally in the dialogue,—the feeling that we are growing less agreeable to our friends, that our company is less sought after, and that we are, in short,