"To wait patiently, however, man must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is
an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the
character. As a Bishop has said, 'Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity,' so are cheerfulness and diligence [a considerable
make-weight] nine-tenths of practical wisdom."

Sir Arthur Helps, in those essays of his, combining profound observation
with strong genial sympathies and the highest charms of style,
repeatedly adverts to the dulness, the want of sunny light-hearted
enjoyment of the English temperament, and, on one occasion, piquantly
quotes the remark of Froissart on our Saxon progenitors: "They took
their pleasures sadly, as was their fashion; _ils se divertirent moult
tristement à la mode de leur pays_"

There is no dispute as to the value or the desirableness of this
accomplishment. Hume, in his "Life," says of himself, "he was ever
disposed to see the favourable more than the unfavourable side of
things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess than to be born
to an estate of ten thousand a year". This sanguine, happy temper, is
merely another form of the cheerfulness recommended to general adoption.

I contend, nevertheless, that to bid a man be habitually cheerful, he
not being so already, is like bidding him treble his fortune, or add a
cubit to his stature. The quality of a cheerful, buoyant temperament
partly belongs to the original cast of the constitution--like the bone,
the muscle, the power of memory, the aptitude for science or for music;
and is partly the outcome of the whole manner of life. In order to
sustain the quality, the physical (as the support of the mental) forces
of the system must run largely in one particular channel; and, of