While cheerfulness of disposition is a great source of enjoyment in life, it is also a great safeguard of character. A devotional writer of the present day, in answer to the question, How are we to overcome temptations? says: "Cheerfulness is the first thing, cheerfulness is the second, and cheerfulness is the third." It furnishes the best soil for the growth of goodness and virtue. It gives brightness of heart and elasticity of spirit. It is the companion of charity, the nurse of patience the mother of wisdom. It is also the best of moral and mental tonics. "The best cordial of all," said Dr. Marshall Hall to one of his patients, "is cheerfulness." And Solomon has said that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." When Luther was once applied to for a remedy against melancholy, his advice was: "Gaiety and courage--innocent gaiety, and rational honourable courage--are the best medicine for young men, and for old men, too; for all men against sad thoughts." [172] Next to music, if not before it, Luther loved children and flowers. The great gnarled man had a heart as tender as a woman's. Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It has been called the bright weather of the heart. It gives harmony of soul, and is a perpetual song without words. It is tantamount to repose. It enables nature to recruit its strength; whereas worry and discontent debilitate it, involving constant wear-and-tear. How is it that we see such men as Lord Palmerston growing old in harness, working on vigorously to the end? Mainly through equanimity of temper and habitual cheerfulness. They have educated themselves in the habit of endurance, of not being easily provoked, of bearing and forbearing, of hearing harsh and even unjust things said of them without indulging in undue resentment, and avoiding worreting, petty, and self-tormenting cares. An intimate friend of Lord Palmerston, who observed him closely for twenty years, has said that he never saw him angry, with perhaps one exception; and that was when the ministry responsible for the calamity in Affghanistan, of which he was one, were unjustly accused by their opponents of falsehood, perjury, and wilful mutilation of public documents. So far as can be learnt from biography, men of the greatest genius have been for the most part cheerful, contented men--not eager for reputation, money, or power--but relishing life, and keenly susceptible of enjoyment, as we find reflected in their works. Such seem to have been Homer, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Shakspeare, Cervantes. Healthy serene cheerfulness is apparent in their great creations. Among the same class of cheerful-minded men may also be mentioned Luther, More, Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo. Perhaps they were happy because constantly occupied, and in the pleasantest of all work--that of creating out of the fulness and richness of their great minds.