application. I met him lately in a circle of the gayest company,
and he was the very life and soul of our conversation: so much
wit with good manners; so much gallantry without affectation; so
much ingenious knowledge so genteelly delivered, I have never
before observed in any one. [Footnote: Qualities immediately
agreeable to others,] You would admire him still more, says a
fourth, if you knew him more familiarly. That cheerfulness, which
you might remark in him, is not a sudden flash struck out by
company: it runs through the whole tenor of his life, and
preserves a perpetual serenity on his countenance, and
tranquillity in his soul. He has met with severe trials,
misfortunes as well as dangers; and by his greatness of mind, was
still superior to all of them [Footnote: Qualities immediately
agreeable to the person himself]. The image, gentlemen, which you
have here delineated of Cleanthes, cried I, is that of
accomplished merit. Each of you has given a stroke of the pencil
to his figure; and you have unawares exceeded all the pictures
drawn by Gratian or Castiglione. A philosopher might select this
character as a model of perfect virtue.

And as every quality which is useful or agreeable to ourselves or
others is, in common life, allowed to be a part of personal
merit; so no other will ever be received, where men judge of
things by their natural, unprejudiced reason, without the
delusive glosses of superstition and false religion. Celibacy,
fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence,
solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason
are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they
serve to no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in
the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society;