He possesses, in a high degree, the happy faculty of adapting himself to others, from whom he expects no more than they can give and from whom he obtains the best they have. “There are few,” he says, “in whom, if we study them, we do not find some estimable qualities. If each has his weaknesses, so each has his virtues, which it is for us to discover.” Herein he excels.
The same day may see him dogmatize with a pedant, reason with a sage, shine in a social circle, console the unfortunate, contend for the rights of humanity, and swear fidelity to the woman of his choice. He talks trade to the shopkeeper, politics to the ambitious, perspective to the painter, play-things to childhood, house affairs to the matron, and probity to all. All he says bears the impress of a benign, humane philosophy that is now grave and now gay, as the time or the place may demand.
In nothing does his prudence more appear than in his pleasures, for be their character what it may, they never see him overstep the limit prescribed by decency and self-respect. That pleasure that injures no one seems to him innocent, and that recreation that follows labor seems to him reasonable.
Honesty with him has become a sort of instinct, which he exercises without reflection. The possibility that he could take an ignoble advantage, be wilfully unjust, or betray a trust, material or confidential, has never crossed his thought.
In the management of his material concerns, he is a model. In large expenditures he is guarded, in order that he may be the better able to be liberal in small ones. He never is guilty of that parsimony in little things that disgraces more than display in great ones ever exalts. It is his special care to be discriminating in his bounties, moderate in his expenditures and punctual in his payments. He often denies himself the pleasures of luxury to indulge in those of benevolence. If misfortune lessens his income, he is prompt to retrench; he knows that the friends and acquaintances he will lose should not be accounted veritable losses. He is modest in prosperity, resigned in adversity, and dignified always.
If he speaks of religion, he chooses carefully the time and the place. Whatever the prevailing belief in the community in which he lives, he considers it as forming a part of the laws, and he respects whatever contributes to stability and order. He attacks abuses only and seeks to destroy only what he can replace. He takes nothing on trust, but examines well before giving his assent; and that religion finds most favor with him that attaches most importance to the doing of good deeds. The man that in his eyes is the most truly religious is he that does most for his fellows. He rejoices that beneficence is held in like esteem by all creeds, however widely may differ their dogmas, and that the various religions of the world repose on the belief in the existence of a Supreme Being that punishes vice and rewards virtue. He has the modesty to think and the honesty to confess that as so many millions are in error, he also may err. Nor has he the presumption, like so many of his fellows, to set himself up as an infallible judge of others. But he pities those presuming motes that live but an instant, come they know not whence, and go they know not where, and yet would judge the whole by a part, and eternity by a span, conclude that all is but the product of chance, assert that what passes their reason is not reasonable, and deny the existence of Him to whom millions of years are but a moment, and millions of miles but a point.