compare what you have done with Nature itself, or with the 'ideal'
of your own mind, and you will be secured, by the contrast which
will be apparent, against the effects of pride and presumption."

Long years after, when Ary Scheffer was himself a grandfather, he
remembered with affection the advice of his mother, and repeated
it to his children. And thus the vital power of good example
lives on from generation to generation, keeping the world ever
fresh and young. Writing to his daughter, Madame Marjolin, in
1846, his departed mother's advice recurred to him, and he said:
"The word MUST--fix it well in your memory, dear child; your
grandmother seldom had it out of hers. The truth is, that through
our lives nothing brings any good fruit except what is earned by
either the work of the hands, or by the exertion of one's self-
denial. Sacrifices must, in short, be ever going on if we would
obtain any comfort or happiness. Now that I am no longer young, I
declare that few passages in my life afford me so much
satisfaction as those in which I made sacrifices, or denied myself
enjoyments. 'Das Entsagen' (the forbidden) is the motto of the
wise man. Self-denial is the quality of which Jesus Christ
set us the example." (13)

The French historian Michelet makes the following touching
reference to his mother in the Preface to one of his most popular
books, the subject of much embittered controversy at the time at
which it appeared:- "Whilst writing all this, I have had in my
mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed
to support me in these contentions. I lost her thirty years ago
(I was a child then)--nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she
follows me from age to age.