inguished
the great patriots of the seventeenth century; and it has ever since
characterised our greatest statesmen. "I know not how it is," says an
English writer, "but their commerce with the ancients appears to me to
produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing
effect upon their judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and
events in general. They are like persons who have had a weighty and
impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the empire
of facts, and more independent of the language current among those with
whom they live."]

[Footnote 1918: Hazlitt's TABLE TALK: 'On Thought and Action.']

[Footnote 201: Mungo Park declared that he was more affected by this incident than
by any other that befel him in the course of his travels. As he lay
down to sleep on the mat spread for him on the floor of the hut, his
benefactress called to the female part of the family to resume their
task of spinning cotton, in which they continued employed far into the
night. "They lightened their labour with songs," says the traveller,
"one of which was composed extempore, for I was myself the subject of
it; it was sung by one of the young women, the rest joining in a chorus.
The air was sweet and plaintive, and the words, literally translated,
were these: 'The winds roared, and the rains fell. The poor white man,
faint and weary, came and sat under our tree. He has no mother to bring
him milk, no wife to grind his corn.' Chorus--'Let us pity the white
man, no mother has he!' Trifling as this recital may appear, to a person
in my situation the circumstance was affecting in the highest degree. I
was so oppressed by such unexpected kindness, that sleep fled before my
eyes."]

[Footnote 202: 'Transformation, or Monte Beni.']

[Footnote 203: 'Portraits Contemporains,' iii. 519.]

[Footnote 204: Mr. Arthur Helps, in one of his Essays, has wisely said: "You
observe a man becoming day by day richer, or advancing in station,
or increasing in professional reputation, and you set him down as a
successful man in life. But if his home is an ill-regulated one,
where no links of affection extend throughout the family--whose former
domestics [20and he has had more of them than he can well remember] look
back upon their sojourn with him as one unblessed by kind words or
deeds--I contend that that man has not been successful. Whatever good
fortune he may have in the world, it is to be remembered