a more tender heart--few
men a more catholic and Christian sympathy for the poor--than the writer
of the "Song of the Shirt."

What such men as these have done, every one else surely can do.
Cheerfulness is a Christian duty; moroseness, dulness, gloominess, as
false, and wrong, and cruel as they are unchristian. We are too far
advanced now in the light of truth to go back into the Gothic and
conventual gloom of the Middle Ages, any more than we could go back to
the exercises of the Flagellants and the nonsense of the pre-Adamites.
All whole-hearted peoples have been lively and bustling, noisy almost,
in their progress, pushing, energetic, broad in shoulder, strong in
lung, loud in voice, of free brave color, bold look, and bright eyes.
They are the cheerful people in the world--

"Active doers, noble livers--strong to labors sure to conquer;"

and soon pass in the way of progress the more quiet and gloomy of their
fellows. That some of this cheerfulness may be simply animal is true,
and that a man may be a dullard and yet sit and "grin like a Cheshire
cat;" but we are not speaking of grinning. Laughter is all very well; is
a healthy, joyous, natural impulse; the true mark of superiority between
man and beast, for no inferior animal laughs; but we are not writing of
laughter, but of that continued even tone of spirits, which lies in the
middle zone between frantic merriment and excessive despondency.
Cheerfulness arises from various causes: from health; but it is not
dependent upon health;--from good fortune; but it does not arise solely
from that;--from honor, and position, and a tickled pride and vanity;
but, as we have seen, it is quite independent of these. The truth is, it
is a brave habit of the mind; a prime proof of wisdom; capable of being
acquired, and of the very greatest value.

A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not "cramp his
mind, nor take half views of men and things." He knows that there is
much misery, but that misery is not the rule of life. He sees that in
every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly
joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full
of careering and rejoicing insects, that everywhere the good outbalances
the bad, and that every evil that there is has its compensating balm.
Then the brave man, as our German cousins say, possesses the world,
whereas the melancholy man does not even possess his own share of it.
E