even wanted food and clothing; yet his ardour of
investigation remained the same. Once, when the Institute invited him,
as being one of its oldest members, to assist at a SEANCE, his answer
was that he regretted he could not attend for want of shoes. "It was a
touching sight," says Cuvier, "to see the poor old man, bent over the
embers of a decaying fire, trying to trace characters with a feeble hand
on the little bit of paper which he held, forgetting all the pains of
life in some new idea in natural history, which came to him like
some beneficent fairy to cheer him in his loneliness." The Directory
eventually gave him a small pension, which Napoleon doubled; and at
length, easeful death came to his relief in his seventy-ninth year. A
clause in his will, as to the manner of his funeral, illustrates the
character of the man. He directed that a garland of flowers, provided by
fifty-eight families whom he had established in life, should be the
only decoration of his coffin--a slight but touching image of the more
durable monument which he had erected for himself in his works.

Such are only a few instances, of the cheerful-working-ness of great
men, which might, indeed, be multiplied to any extent. All large
healthy natures are cheerful as well as hopeful. Their example is also
contagious and diffusive, brightening and cheering all who come within
reach of their influence. It was said of Sir John Malcolm, when he
appeared in a saddened camp in India, that "it was like a gleam of
sunlight,.... no man left him without a smile on his face. He was 'boy
Malcolm' still. It was impossible to resist the fascination of his
genial presence." [173]

There was the same joyousness of nature about Edmund Burke. Once at a
dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, when the conversation turned upon
the suitability of liquors for particular temperaments, Johnson said,
"Claret is for boys, port for men, and brandy for heroes." "Then," said
Burke, "let me have claret: I love to be a boy, and to have the careless
gaiety of boyish days." And so it is, that there are old young men, and
young old men--some who are as joyous and cheerful as boys in their
old age, and others who are as morose and cheerless as saddened old men
while still in their boyhood.

In the presence of some priggish youths, we have heard a cheerful old
man declare that, apparently, there would soon be nothing but "old boys"
left. Cheerfulness, being generous and genial, joyous and