elevate their entire aspirations. Thus Franklin, while a workman
in London, is said to have reformed the manners of an entire
workshop. So the man of bad character and debased energy will
unconsciously lower and degrade his fellows. Captain John Brown--
the "marching-on Brown"--once said to Emerson, that "for a
settler in a new country, one good believing man is worth a
hundred, nay, worth a thousand men without character." His
example is so contagious, that all other men are directly and
beneficially influenced by him, and he insensibly elevates and
lifts them up to his own standard of energetic activity.

Communication with the good is invariably productive of good. The
good character is diffusive in his influence. "I was common clay
till roses were planted in me," says some aromatic earth in the
Eastern fable. Like begets like, and good makes good. "It is
astonishing," says Canon Moseley, "how much good goodness makes.
Nothing that is good is alone, nor anything bad; it makes others
good or others bad--and that other, and so on: like a stone
thrown into a pond, which makes circles that make other wider
ones, and then others, till the last reaches the shore.... Almost
all the good that is in the world has, I suppose, thus come down
to us traditionally from remote times, and often unknown centres
of good." (5) So Mr. Ruskin says, "That which is born of evil
begets evil; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches
valour and honour."

Hence it is that the life of every man is a daily inculcation of
good or bad example to others. The life of a good man is at the
same time the most eloquent lesson of virtue and the most severe
reproof of vice. Dr. Hooker described the life of a pious