mountain air, or enjoying a bath of sunshine. The power of Sir
Thomas More's gentle nature was so great that it subdued the bad
at the same time that it inspired the good. Lord Brooke said of
his deceased friend, Sir Philip Sidney, that "his wit and
understanding beat upon his heart, to make himself and others, not
in word or opinion, but in life and action, good and great."

The very sight of a great and good man is often an inspiration to
the young, who cannot help admiring and loving the gentle, the
brave, the truthful, the magnanimous! Cbateaubriand saw
Washington only once, but it inspired him for life. After
describing the interview, he says: "Washington sank into the tomb
before any little celebrity had attached to my name. I passed
before him as the most unknown of beings. He was in all his glory
--I in the depth of my obscurity. My name probably dwelt not a
whole day in his memory. Happy, however, was I that his looks
were cast upon me. I have felt warmed for it all the rest of my
life. There is a virtue even in the looks of a great man."

When Niebuhr died, his friend, Frederick Perthes, said of him:
"What a contemporary! The terror of all bad and base men, the stay
of all the sterling and honest, the friend and helper of youth."
Perthes said on another occasion: "It does a wrestling man good to
be constantly surrounded by tried wrestlers; evil thoughts are put
to flight when the eye falls on the portrait of one in whose
living presence one would have blushed to own them." A Catholic
money-lender, when about to cheat, was wont to draw a veil over
the picture of his favourite saint. So Hazlitt has said of the
portrait of a beautiful female, that it seemed as if an unhandsome
action would be impossible in its presence. "It does one good to