servile
courtiers who accompanied him proposed to open the grave, and give the
ashes of the "heretic" to the winds. The monarch's cheek flushed with
honest indignation: "I war not with the dead," said he; "let this place
be respected."

The portrait which the great heathen, Aristotle, drew of the Magnanimous
Man, in other words the True Gentleman, more than two thousand years
ago, is as faithful now as it was then. "The magnanimous man," he said,
"will behave with moderation under both good fortune and bad. He
will know how to be exalted and how to be abased. He will neither be
delighted with success nor grieved by failure. He will neither shun
danger nor seek it, for there are few things which he cares for. He is
reticent, and somewhat slow of speech, but speaks his mind openly and
boldly when occasion calls for it. He is apt to admire, for nothing
is great to him. He overlooks injuries. He is not given to talk about
himself or about others; for he does not care that he himself should
be praised, or that other people should be blamed. He does not cry out
about trifles, and craves help from none."

On the other hand, mean men admire meanly. They have neither modesty,
generosity, nor magnanimity. They are ready to take advantage of the
weakness or defencelessness of others, especially where they have
themselves succeeded, by unscrupulous methods, in climbing to positions
of authority. Snobs in high places are always much less tolerable than
snobs of low degree, because they have more frequent opportunities of
making their want of manliness felt. They assume greater airs, and are
pretentious in all that they do; and the higher their elevation, the
more conspicuous is the incongruity of their position. "The higher the
monkey climbs," says the proverb, "the more he shows his tail."

Much depends on the way in which a thing is done. An act which might
be taken as a kindness if done in a generous spirit, when done in a
grudging spirit, may be felt as stingy, if not harsh and even cruel.
When Ben Jonson lay sick and in poverty, the king sent him a paltry
message, accompanied by a gratuity. The sturdy plainspoken poet's reply
was: "I suppose he sends me this because I live in an alley; tell him
his soul lives in an alley."

From what we have said, it will be obvious that to be of an enduring and
courageous spirit, is of great importance in the formation of character.
It is a source not only of usefulness in life, but of hap