He was most excellently skilled in music, though by profession a physician, and to this addiction to music we probably owe the name of harmony, by which he designated this peculiar doctrine. The doctrine is stated and ably opposed by Lucretius, iii. 98. as well as blood: that Heraclitus regarded the soul as an exhalation; Parmenides as fire, or perhaps rather caloric; Anaxagoras, and Anaximenes as a subtle air or gas. Plutarch indeed affirms of the Greek philosophers in general, that it was acknowledged by all of them that spirit is only attenuate or highly subtle matter; that the soul, Quam vis multa quidem sapientum turba puta which is an aura, preserves us alive, and hence It is well observed by Lucretius in reply to this fancied hypothesis, and the observation proves fatal to it, that sometimes one part of the system alone suffers, the rest continuing in perfect health; and that some organs are capable of being amputated without any injury to the general life of the frame, whilst no sooner are others effected, as the heart for example, than the life immediately begins to faint and flow away: While, instant as the vital heat but ebbs, IBID. The abbé Polignac in his Anti-Lucretius attempted to defend this theory, so far as it applics to corporeal life, but admits at the same time that it will not apply to a solution of animal or mental life. M. Luzac has adverted to it with complacency in our own days in his treatise "Du Droit Naturel, &c. ;" and in the doctrine of Mr. Davy, that regards life as a perpetual series of corpuscular changes, and the living body as the being in which these changes take place, we cannot but observe a leaning towards the same system. § 3. But the theory which, in some shape or other, has been best supported in all ages, and appears to be built upon the largest collection of facts, is that which refers the principle of life to a gaseous or aerial origin; the oxygen or Voltaic aura of the present day, or an aura that was supposed by the Epicureans to have a very considerable resemblance to these active fluids: concerning which we must refer the reader to Mr. Good's commentary upon Lucretius, vol. i. p. 411: in which he enters at large into a comparison between the supposed essence of the vital power as held by this celebrated sect, as well as other phi losophical sects of Greece, and as maintained in the present day in consequence of the developments of chemistry in the department of the gases. It becomes us however to state, before we quit this part of our subject, that breath, spirit, and air are terms employed in the earliest writings of the Jewish scriptures to express the principle of life, that spirit and aura mean the same thing. Hence the pug of Hippocrates, the up of the author de Mundo, the anima mundi of Pythagoras, became jointly described in succeeding ages by the name of callidum innatum, as expressing the vital principle. It afterwards took the name of anima vegetans; and under the philosophical vagaries of Paracelsus sidereal spirit, which Van Helmont, with as little reason, changed for archeus; by which without venturing to assert it, he seems, to imply a direct unity of the rational and living soul; but which was afterwards confined by Stahl to the former alone. About the middle of the last century, when Haller was asserting his theory of the vital principle, which he described under the names vis insita and vis nervea, Dr. Whytt attempted a reformation of the Stahlian doctrine, which excluded the independent living principle. He supposes the soul to be present in different parts of the brain at the same time, while he considers this soul as immaterial and unextended. The discovery of the irritable fibre in muscles, of the different gases which are the boast of modern chemistry, and of the peculiar affinity which several of these possess for the muscular fibre, have, at length, thrown a ray of light upon this recondite subject, though the whole is still for the most part buried in impenetrable dark ness. Glisson is said to be the first discoverer of this principle in the solid fibre; which discovery was afterwards enlarged upon by Haller, who found, by a variety of experiments, that the irritability of muscles remains a long time after their connection with the brain is destroyed. To this power, as we have already observed, he gave the name of vis insita. Fothergill and Girtanner soon started oxygen as the principle of irritability; maintaining that while oxygen is the principle of irritability, irritability is the principle of life. Finally, Humboldt, and along with him most physiologists of the present day, have exchanged oxygen for the Galvanic or Voltaic fluid; and from the very astonishing effects which are found to be produced by this aura upon the recently dead, as well as the living fibre, there can be little doubt, that, if it be not the principle of life itself (at least in animals), it performs a very important part in its production. Whether it be of equal importance in the life of vegetables, remains yet to be ascertained: plants do not appear to possess fibres affected by its action, and in the vegetable kingdom it is highly probable that oxygen maintains a far more powerful influence. May we be allowed to throw out a hint that perhaps it will hereafter appear that these two distinct principles characterize the chief difference between animal and vegetable life? the former being the result of Voltaic gas, the latter of oxygen. See VOLTAISM and OXYGEN. DURATION OF LIFE. This is a subject which equally interests the man and the philosopher; the individual and the community. What is the common term of life; and how often is it encroached upon and cut off by a host of fatal diseases! not unfrequently con. signing a numerous family of survivors to poverty at the moment that the deceased is consigned to the grave. This last consideration involves a political, as the preceding does a physical inquiry: and we sball briefly contemplate the subject under both views: 1. Duration of Life considered physically. Immediately after the creation, when the world was to be peopled by one man and one woman, the ordinary term of life was upwards of 900 years. Immediately after the flood, when there were three males to stock the world, the term of life was cut shorter, and Shem was the only patriarch who attained 500. In the second century we find none that reached 240; in the third, none except Terah that saw 200; a considerable part of the world was by this time sufficiently peopled, and mankind had built cities, and was cantoned out into distant nations. Mr. Derham hence derives an argument (and upon a very sure foundation) for the interposition of a Divine Providence. By degrees as the number of mankind increased, longevity dwindled, till it came down at length to 70 or 80 years: and there it stood, and has continued to stand ever since the time of Moses. This is found a good medium, and by means hereof the world is neither overstocked, nor rendered too thin; but life and death keep a pretty equal pace. That the common duration of man's life has been the same in all ages since the above period, is plain both from sacred and profane history. To pass by others, Plato lived to 81, and was accounted an old man: and the instances of longevity produced by Pliny, 1. vii. c. 48. as very extraordinary, may most of them be matched in modern histories. In the following table are collected into one point of view the most memorable instances of long-lived persons of whose age we have any authentic records. It is extracted from Mr. Whitehurst's Inquiry into the Origin and State of the Earth, with some additions by Dr. Fothergill. William Walker, aged 112, not mentioned above, who was a soldier at the battle of Edge-hill. Lynche's Guide to Health. 146 Norway Cumberland 152 Killingworth Worcestershire Living Died May 30, 1764. Aug. 26, 1766. Jan., 1768. June 24, 1770 d. Both living 1771. Died Feb. 6, 1769. 1777 €. Died Aug. 15, 1656 f. March, 1774 8. June — 1766 *. April 5, 1766'. 1691 a 1668 b. Living The preceding table includes twelve other persons who attained the same age of 130, within the same century. To these we may also add John Rovin, who was born at Szatlova- Carank-Betcher, in the bannat of Temeswar, and lived to the age of 172; while his wife lived to that of 164, having been intermarried for the space of 147 years, and their youngest son being 99 years of age when the father died. And Peter Zorten, a peasant, and countryman of Rovin's, who died in 1724, at the age of 185, his youngest son being 97 years old. The history and whole length pictures of John Rovin, Henry Jenkins and Peter Zorten, were to be seen, before the Revolution, in the library of his royal highness Prince Charles, at Brussels. The Russian bills of mortality of the heptarchy of Pinsask, for the year 1805, contain the following instances of long life: five of 110 years of age; one of 113; four of 120; one of 122; one of 130; and one of 150. Two conclusions may be drawn from these premises: first, that the life of man does not, in any degree, grow shorter in proportion to the length of time the world has existed; and next, that although longevity may perhaps be more frequent in some districts than in others, yet that it is by no means restricted to any particular district. In the days of Moses, the ordinary limits of human life, as appears from his pathetic prayer constituting the 90th Psalm, did not exceed 70 or 20 years. No king of Judah lived beyond that period. When the Romans, however, were numbered by Vespasian, there were found in the empire, in that age of effeminacy, 10 men aged an hundred and twenty and upwards. Among the princes of modern times, Frederick the Great, of Prussia, lived to the age of 74; George I. of Great Britain, to that of $3; George II. to that of 77; and his present Majesty has already reached the 73d year of his life, and the 50th of his reign. Lewis XIV. of France was 77 years old. Stanislaus, king of Poland and duke of Lorrain, was still older. Pope Clement XII. lived to the age of 20. us, The north of Europe (as we have sufficiently evinced in our extract from the Russian bills of mortality for Pinsask), affords abundant instances of longevity. Yet Louisa Trexo, who died at 174 or 175, was an inhabitant of Cordova du Tucuman, in Spanish America; and it affords a striking proof of that country also being favourable to longevity, that at the time of her death there were several persons of 100 years old, and another negro woman of 120, who gave judicial testimony of her age. Our own country, (which may be regarded in general climate and temperature as a medium between the two), affords, perhaps, as numerous instances as any. Mr. Carew in his Survey of Cornwall, assures that it is no unusual thing with the inhabitants of that county to reach 90th years of age and upwards, and even to retain their strength of body and perfect use of their senses. Besides Brown the Cornish beggar, who lived to 120, and one Polczew to 130 years of age, he remembered the decease of four persons, in his own parish, the sum of whose years, taken collectively, amounted to 340. It is evident, therefore, that longevity is by no means confined to any particular nation or climate; nor are there wanting instances of it in almost every quarter of the globe, as appears from the preceding as well as the subsequent Table; which might have been considerably enlarged had it been necessary. This man, in 1789, at the age of 120, quitted his native hills, and from the summit of Mount Jura undertook a journey to Versailles, to behold and return thanks to the National Assembly, for the vote which had freed him and his poor countrymen from the feudal yoke. In the early part of his life, he was a servant in the family of the Prince de Beaufremont. His memory continued good to the last day of his life; and the principal inconveniences which he felt from his great age were, that his sight was weakened and the natural heat of his body was so diminished, that he shivered with cold in the middle of the dogdays if he was not sitting by a good fire. This old man was received in the body of the house by the National Assembly, indulged with a chair, and directed to keep on his hat, lest he should catch cold if he were to sit uncovered. A collection was made for him by the members, which exceeded five bundred pounds sterling; but he lived not to return to Mount Jura. He was buried on Saturday the 31st of January, 1790, with great funeral pomp, in the parish church of St. Eustace, at Paris. Lynche on Health. Bacon's History, page 134. St. James's Chron. June 14, 1781. Baker's Chron. p. 502. All the public prints, Jan. 1790. Died Feb. 19, 1792. Edin. Even. patriotic Mr. Fletcher, the idea of the people selling themselves as slaves for immediate subsistence. He was bred in the midst of want and name hardships, cold, hunger, and, for the years of his apprenticeship with a mason and stone-cutter, in Inverness, in incessant fatigue. He enlisted when a boy, in the Scottish service, in the town of Perth, in the last year of the reign of King William. The regiment into which he enlisted was the Scots Royals, commanded by the earl of Orkney. That old military corps, at that time used bows and arrows, as well as swords, and wore steel caps. He served in Germany and Flanders, under the duke of Marlborough; under the duke of Argyle, in the Rebellion, 1745; in the Highland Watch, or companies raised for enforcing the laws in the Highlands; in the same companies when, under the of the 42d regiment, they were sent abroad to Flanders, to join the army under the duke of Cumberland; in the same regiment in Ireland, and, on the breaking out of the French war, in 1757, in America. From the 42d he was draughted to act as a drill serjeant in the 78th regiment, in which he served at the reduction of Louisbourg and Quebec: after this he became an outpensioner of Chelsea Hospital. But such was the spirit of this brave and hardy veteran, that he served in 1761 as a volunteer in Germany, under the marquis of Granby, and offered his services in the American war to Sir Henry Clinton: who, though he declined to employ the old man in the fatigues and dangers of war, treated him with great kindness, allowed him a liberal weekly pension out of his own pocket, and sent him home in a ship charged with despatches to goThe serjeant," as his memory (acwhich was so great as to suggest, even to the cording to the observation of his biographer) He served as a private, at the taking of Gibraltar, in 1704. Memoirs of the Life and Gallant Exploits of the Old Highlander, Serjeant Donald Macleod, &c. published Jan. 1791, in the 103d year of b's age. - This old gentleman, for it appears that he really was a gentleman both by birth and by behaviour, was born in the year of the Revolution, in the parish of Bracadill, in the isle of Skye, and county of Inverness, North Britain. He was a cadet of the family of Ulinish, in Skye, and descended, through his mother, from Macdocald of Slate, the ancestor of the present Lord Macdonald. The earlier part of his life coincided with the famine of seven years in Scotland; vernment. These examples are abundantly sufficient to prove, that longevity does not depend, so much as has been supposed, on any particular climate, situation, or occupation in life; for we see, that it often prevails in places where all these are extremely dissimilar; and it would, moreover, be very difficult, in the histories of the several persons above-mentioned, to find any circumstance common to them all, except, perhaps, that of being born of healthy parents, and of being inured to daily labour, temperance, and simplicity of diet. Among the inferior ranks of mankind, therefore, rather than among the sons of ease and luxury, shall we find the most numerous instances of longevity; even frequently, when other external circumstances seem extremely unfavourable; as in the case of the poor sexton at Peterborough, who, notwithstanding his unpromising occupation among dead bodies, lived long enough to bury two crowned heads, and to survive two complete generations. The livelihood of Henry Jenkins and old Parr, is said to have consisted chiefly of the coarsest fare, as they depended on precarious alms. To which may be added, the remarkable instance of Agnes Milbourne, who, after bringing forth a numerous offspring, and being obliged, through extreme indigence, to pass the latter part of her life in St. Luke's work-house, yet reached her 106th year in that sordid and unfriendly situation. The plain diet and invigorating employ ments of a country life, are acknowledged on all hands to be highly conducive to health and longevity, while the luxury and refinements of large cities are allowed to be equally destructive to the a is impaired, does not pretend to make an exact enumeration of all his offspring; but he knows of sixteen sons now living, fourteen of whom are in the army and navy, besides daughters; the eldest of whom, by his present wife, is mantua-maker in Newcastle. His eldest son is now eighty-three years old, and the youngest only nine. Nor, in all probability, would this lad close the rear of his immediate progeny, if his present wife, the boy's mother, had not attained to the forty-ninth year of her age. In his prime, he did not exceed five feet seven inches. He is now inclined, through age, to five fect five inches. He has an interesting physiognomy, expressive of sincerity, sensibility, and manly courage. His biographer very properly submitted it to the consideration of the Polygraphic Society, whether they might not do a thing worthy of themselves and their ingenious art, if they should multiply likenesses of this living antiquity, and circulate them at an easy rate throughout Britain and Europe. They would thus gratify a very ge neral curiosity, a curiosity not confined to the present age. The following instance is given in a recent German Journal; but the name of the veteran is not mentioned: "There is now living, near Polosk, on the frontiers of Livonia, a Russian, who served under Gustavus Adolphus. He was present at the battle of Pultowa, in 1709, at which time he was eighty-six years of age. At the age of ninety-three he entered into the marriage state, and had children. The family of this patriarch consists of 186 individuals, who reside together in a village, which comprehends ten houses: the oldest of his grandchildren is 102. This old man still enjoys a perfect state of health, though now 180." human species; and this consideration alone, perhaps more than counterbalances all the boasted privileges of superior elegance and civilization resulting from a city life. From country villages, and not from crowded cities, have the preceding instances of longevity been chiefly supplied. Accordingly it appears, from the London bills of mortality, during a period of thirty years, viz. from the year 1728 to 1758, the sum of the deaths amounted to 750,322, and that, in all this prodigious number, only 242 persons survived the 100th year of their age! This overgrown metropolis was long ago computed by Dr. Price to contain a ninth part of the inhabitants of England, and to consume annually seven thousand persons, who remove into it from the country every year, without increasing it. He moreover observes, that the number of inhabitants in England and Wales has diminished about one fourth part since the Revolution, and so rapidly of late that in eleven years, near 200,000 of our common people have been lost. If the calculation be just, however alarming it may appear in a national view, there is this consolation, when considered in a philosophical light, that without partial evil there can be no general good; and that what a nation loses in the scale of population at one period, it gains at another; and thus, probably, the average number of inhabitants on the surface of the globe continues at all times nearly the same. By this medium, the world is neither overstocked with inhabitants, nor rendered too thin, but life and death keep a tolerably equal pace. The inhabitants of this island, comparatively speaking, are but as the dust of the balance; yet, instead of being dimi nished, we are assured by other writers that within these thirty years they are greatly in creased. na. as are The desire of self-preservation, and of protracting the short span of life, is so intimately interwoven with our constitution, that it is justly esteemed one of the first principles of our ture, and, in spite even of pain and misery, seldom quits us to the last moments of our existence. It seems, therefore, to be no less our duty than our interest, to examine minutely into the various means that have been considered as conducive to health and long life; and, if possible, to distinguish such circumstances essential to that great end from those which are merely accidental. But here it is much to be regretted that an accurate history of the lives of all the remarkable persons in the above table, so far as relates to the diet, regimen, and the use of the non-naturals, has not been faithfully handed down to us; without which it is impossible to draw the necessary inferences. Is it not then a matter of astonishment that historians and philosophers have hitherto paid so lit. tle attention to longevity? If the present imperfect list should excite others, of more leisure and better abilities, to undertake a full investigation of so interesting a subject, the inquiry might prove not only curious but highly useful mankind. In order to furnish materials for a future history of longevity, the bills of mortality throughout the kingdom ought first to be revised, and put on a better footing, agreeable to the scheme of which Manchester and Chester have already given a specimen highly worthy of imitation. The plan, however, might be further improved with very little trouble, by adding a to |