necessary--but because he was a man who could hold his tongue when it
was wisdom not to speak, and because he carefully kept his own counsel
when to have revealed it might have been dangerous to the liberties of
his country. He was so gentle and conciliatory in his manner that his
enemies even described him as timid and pusillanimous. Yet, when
the time for action came, his courage was heroic, his determination
unconquerable. "The rock in the ocean," says Mr. Motley, the historian
of the Netherlands, "tranquil amid raging billows, was the favourite
emblem by which his friends expressed their sense of his firmness."

Mr. Motley compares William the Silent to Washington, whom he in many
respects resembled. The American, like the Dutch patriot, stands out
in history as the very impersonation of dignity, bravery, purity, and
personal excellence. His command over his feelings, even in moments of
great difficulty and danger, was such as to convey the impression,
to those who did not know him intimately, that he was a man of inborn
calmness and almost impassiveness of disposition. Yet Washington was by
nature ardent and impetuous; his mildness, gentleness, politeness, and
consideration for others, were the result of rigid self-control and
unwearied self-discipline, which he diligently practised even from his
boyhood. His biographer says of him, that "his temperament was ardent,
his passions strong, and amidst the multiplied scenes of temptation
and excitement through which he passed, it was his constant effort, and
ultimate triumph, to check the one and subdue the other." And again:
"His passions were strong, and sometimes they broke out with
vehemence, but he had the power of checking them in an instant. Perhaps
self-control was the most remarkable trait of his character. It was in
part the effect of discipline; yet he seems by nature to have possessed
this power in a degree which has been denied to other men." [15*5]

The Duke of Wellington's natural temper, like that of Napoleon, was
irritable in the extreme; and it was only by watchful self-control that
he was enabled to restrain it. He studied calmness and coolness in the
midst of danger, like any Indian chief. At Waterloo, and elsewhere,
he gave his orders in the most critical moments, without the slightest
excitement, and in a tone of voice almost more than usually subdued. [156]

Wordsworth the poet was, in his childhood, "of a stiff, moody, and
violent temper," and "