OLD AGE AND DEATH.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR "]
Stn,—The thought which Mrs. Oliphant draws out so strikingly
in" Old Lady Mary," namely, that old age, after a certain period, when all the storms and struggles °feather life have been exchanged for a state of entire calm and freedom from care, may, by reason of its very contentment, come to regard death as a more and more remote fact, until it virtually forgets that it is necessary to die _Ett all, finds, I think, an interesting parallel in the lines from
Browning's " Pippa Passes," where Pippa is singing of that King who "lived long ago, in the morning of the world ":— .
"For he was got to a sleepy mood, So safe from all decrepitude, Age with its bane so sure gone by, That, having lived thus long, there seemed No need the King should ever die."
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