n in the minutiae of daily life and conduct that this
consistency has its most beneficial operation, and it must derive its
power from the personal character for this reason, that no virtues but
indigenous ones are capable of the sort of moral transfusion here
mentioned. It is rare to see a parent, eminently distinguished by any
moral virtue, unsuccessful in the transmitting that virtue to children,
simply because, being an integral part of character, it is consistent in
its mode of operation; so virtues originating in effort, or practised
for the sake of example, are seldom transferable; the same consistency
cannot be expected in the exercise of them, and this may explain the
small success of pattern mothers, _par excellence_ so called, and whose
good intentions and sacrifices ought not to be objects of derision; the
very appearance of effort mars the effect of all effort.

The world is sometimes surprised to see extraordinary proofs of moral
influence exercised by persons who never planned, never aimed, to obtain
such influence,--nay, whose conduct is never regulated by any fixed aim
for its attainment; the fact is, that those characters are composed of
truth and love;--truth, which prevents the assumption even of virtues
which are not natural, thereby adding to the influence of such as are;
love, the most contagious of all moral contagions, the regenerating
principle of the world!

The virtue which mainly contributes to the support of
consistency--without which, in fact, consistency cannot exist--is
simplicity: consistency of conduct can never be maintained by characters
in any degree double or sophisticated, for it is not of simplicity as
opposed to craft, but of simplicity as opposed to sophistication, that I
would here speak, and rather as the Christian virtue, single-mindedness;
the desire to _be_, opposed to the wish to _appear_. We have seen how
rarely influence can be gained where no faith can be yielded; now an
unsimple character can never inspire faith or trust. People do not
always analyze mental phenomena sufficiently to know the reason of this
fact, but no one will dispute the fact itself. It is true there are
persons who have the power of conciliating confidence of which they are
unworthy, but it is only because (like Castruccio Castrucciani) they are
such exquisite dissemblers, that their affection of simplicity has
temporarily the effect of simplicity itself. This power of successful
assumption is, fo