with his
small English ships he cast himself against the navies of Spain; or at
Xenophon, conducting back from an inhospitable and hostile country, and
through unknown paths, his ten thousand Greeks; or Caesar, riding up and
down the banks of the Rubicon, sad enough belike when alone, but at the
head of his men cheerful, joyous, well dressed, rather foppish, in fact,
his face shining with good humor as with oil. Again, Nelson, in the
worst of dangers, was as cheerful as the day. He had even a rough but
quiet humor in him just as he carried his coxswain behind him to bundle
the swords of the Spanish and French captains under his arm. He could
clap his telescope to his blind eye, and say, "Gentlemen, I can not make
out the signal," when the signal was adverse to his wishes, and then go
in and win, in spite of recall. Fancy the dry laughs which many an old
sea-dog has had over that cheerful incident. How the story lights up the
dark page of history! Then there was Henry of Navarre, lion in war,
winner of hearts, bravest of the brave, who rode down the ranks at Ivry
when Papist and Protestant were face to face, when more than his own
life and kingdom were at stake, and all the horrors of religious war
were loosened and unbound, ready to ravage poor, unhappy France. That
beaming, hopeful countenance won the battle, and is a parallel to the
brave looks of Queen Elizabeth when she cheered her Englishmen at
Tilbury.

But we are not all soldiers or sailors, although, too, our Christian
profession hath adopted the title of soldiers in the battle of life. It
is all very well to cite great commanders who, in the presence of
danger, excited by hope, with the eyes of twenty thousand men upon them,
are cheerful and happy; but what is that to the solitary author, the
poor artist, the governess, the milliner, the shoemaker, the
factory-girl, they of the thousand persons in profession or trade who
are given to murmur, and who think life so hard and gloomy and wretched
that they can not go through it with a smile on their faces and despair
in their hearts? What are examples and citations to them? "Hecuba!"
cries out poor, melancholy, morbid Hamlet, striking on a vein of
thought, "what's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" Much.

We all have trials; but it is certain that good temper and cheerfulness
will make us bear them more easily than any thing else. "Temper," said
one of our bishops, "is nine-tenths of Christianity." We do not live no