lunch smoking a cigarette over a cup of coffee. They were discussing personality, and the rarity of really great personalities, and the subtle spell they exercise. "Mr. G. (Mr. Gladstone) was one," said Mr. Morley. "We are sitting here at our ease, not wasting time, but spending it in discussing high themes; but if the door opened and Mr. G. came into the room, we should put down our cigarettes and sit upright in our chairs to talk to him. Why we should do so, I do not exactly know. It is a concession we involuntarily make to a great personality."

There is an older story that every one knows, of Charles Lamb and some of his friends discussing what they would do if any great historic figure came among them. If Shakespeare came they would all bow their heads; but what, some one asked, would they do if Jesus Christ came into the room? Charles Lamb gave the answer: "We should go down on our knees," he said; "and, bending low, kiss the hem of His garment." The character who stands supreme among all the sons of men who have trod this earth would, Lamb recognized, command the homage of even that group of convivial Bohemians.

Exalted character is independent of wealth or learning. Simplicity is almost invariably an element in nobility of character. Truth, generosity, courage, morality, benevolence, fortitude-these are the imperishable and indispensable traits in the type of character which wins respect, and by its contagious influence exalts all who come within its sway. Success, wealth, and position-which, properly acquired, are not to be despised-give men power; but real character is not something a man has-it is some

thing that he is. And its presence makes a man rich in things that money cannot buy, or success command, or influence secure for him.

A man's greatest inheritance is his character. "What," asks Dr. Fairbairn, "shall a parent give to his son? The father says, a fortune. 'I will found a family, make an estate, leave an inheritance to the boy such as his father never knew.' Pray, what was the father's inheritance? My father left me nothing.' 'Nothing! Didn't he leave you character?' Many a son has been ruined because his father left him a fortune. Who shall count the number of sons saved because the father left a character?"

Many a young man's life is spoiled by the inheritance of prejudices that warp his judgment, of blemishes of character that weaken his resistance to evil, and of feebleness of will that hampers his efforts to rise on stepping-stones of his dead self. Triumph over such inheritances is the reward of moral effort. Life is a continuous battle, and man has to fight every hour of his life for his moral integrity, and for that "mellow juice of life" which we call char

acter.

"We do not need," said Theodore Roosevelt, " men of unsteady brilliance or erratic power-unbalanced men. The men we need are the men of strong, earnest, solid character, the men who possess the homely virtues, and who, to those virtues, add courage, rugged honesty, and high resolve.”

Another noble preacher of righteousness, Bishop Phillips Brooks, warned us against the blustering goodness that often cloaks hypocrisy, and he remarked that "the noisy waves are failures, but the

great silent tide is a success." Character like Lord Roberts', does not advertise: it influences by its quiet persuasiveness.

Without moral courage high character is impossible. By moral courage I do not mean ostentatious heroics, but the quieter heroisms that court no publicity. In The Lady of the Decoration there is a story of a lady missionary who, after long years of service in Japan, receives her furlough, and with exultant heart sails for home. On the voyage she calls at the Leper island, to make a report for her society. A few days after reaching home and greeting her friends, she notices a grey patch on her hand. It is the first and terrible symptom of leprosy. She knows only too well that there is no cure. With the courage that reveals her character, she says farewell to her friends and sails, without a whine, for the Leper island, to spend her life with its drear victims.

Bret Harte, in his inimitable short stories of the Forty-Niners, shows us the noble traits of character that often cropped out from the rude, rough adventurers in the gold camps. This nobility of soul is common enough among the pioneers of empire who build the roads and bridge the fords in the waste places of the earth.

"Who are the noble of the earth,

The true aristocrats,

Who need not bow their heads to kings,

Nor doff to lords their hats?

Who are they but the men of toil,

Who cleave the forests down,

And plant among the wilderness,

The hamlet and the town?

These claim no god of chivalry,
And scorn the knighting rod.

Their coats of arms are noble deeds,
Their peerage is from God."

In the final analysis it is the character of its common people that exalts a nation: and the solidarity of the social order rests on the moral quality of the men and women who do the world's work in obscurity. The character of the humblest citizen is thus a vital factor in the moral health of the entire community.

Attainment of character depends on moral muscle. A young man is wise to pull himself up periodically and subject himself to self-examination.

"What sin have I done? What left undone?

Examine all from first to last:

What is evil-condemn;

What is good-rejoice in."

Self-examination in a morbid introspective spirit is to be deprecated; but an occasional honest stocktaking of one's moral values is a healthy exercise in character-building. As a youth grows from boyhood to manhood, he should acquire, unconsciously, certain powers of automatic goodness. It should, for example, need no exercise of will-power to be honest, because dishonesty should be something he never thinks possible; it should be a thing outside his radius. The habit of resisting common temptations should become so fixed and automatic that resistance calls for no exercise of will-power. He should develop in himself reserves of resistance to indolence, prejudice, vanity, censoriousness,

so that the virtues correcting and negativing these vices come into operation without conscious effort. So character is created, and stored as in a moral reservoir. The will to high moral resolution becomes a bank-balance to be drawn upon at call. If, on self-examination, a young man finds that he has still to grit his teeth and steel his nerve to overcome some every-day temptation, he may well tremble for his foothold on the rocks of moral integrity. Sam Jones, the evangelist, used to say that the proper way to start a religious revival was to take a piece of chalk, draw a ring round oneself, and then pray: "Lord, revive Thy work, and begin with the fellow in this ring."

Character is a fruitage of slow growth and ceaseless vigilance. Declension in character may begin slowly, but the pace accelerates so that many a man finds himself " down and out" before he realizes that his morale has even begun to deteriorate. The legend persists that when Leonardo Da Vinci painted his Christ in "The Last Supper," at Milan, he employed as his model a chorister from the cathedral, whom he had selected for the moral beauty reflected in his face; twenty-five years later Leonardo found a model for his Judas in a ragged and dissolute wretch on the Beggars' Staircase in Rome. As he was sitting for Judas, the model told Leonardo that he had been the model for his Christ.

Weakness of will-power is a certain source of a desolated character. Flabby, invertebrate young men are almost invariably moral failures. The power to say "Yes" and mean it, or "No" and stick to it, makes all the difference to character. Resistance and