Adanson, the French botanist, was about seventy years old when the Revolution broke out, and amidst the shock he lost everything--his fortune, his places, and his gardens. But his patience, courage, and resignation never forsook him. He became reduced to the greatest straits, and even wanted food and clothing; yet his ardour of investigation remained the same. Once, when the Institute invited him, as being one of its oldest members, to assist at a SEANCE, his answer was that he regretted he could not attend for want of shoes. "It was a touching sight," says Cuvier, "to see the poor old man, bent over the embers of a decaying fire, trying to trace characters with a feeble hand on the little bit of paper which he held, forgetting all the pains of life in some new idea in natural history, which came to him like some beneficent fairy to cheer him in his loneliness." The Directory eventually gave him a small pension, which Napoleon doubled; and at length, easeful death came to his relief in his seventy-ninth year. A clause in his will, as to the manner of his funeral, illustrates the character of the man. He directed that a garland of flowers, provided by fifty-eight families whom he had established in life, should be the only decoration of his coffin--a slight but touching image of the more durable monument which he had erected for himself in his works. Such are only a few instances, of the cheerful-working-ness of great men, which might, indeed, be multiplied to any extent. All large healthy natures are cheerful as well as hopeful. Their example is also contagious and diffusive, brightening and cheering all who come within reach of their influence. It was said of Sir John Malcolm, when he appeared in a saddened camp in India, that "it was like a gleam of sunlight,.... no man left him without a smile on his face. He was 'boy Malcolm' still. It was impossible to resist the fascination of his genial presence." [173] There was the same joyousness of nature about Edmund Burke. Once at a dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, when the conversation turned upon the suitability of liquors for particular temperaments, Johnson said, "Claret is for boys, port for men, and brandy for heroes." "Then," said Burke, "let me have claret: I love to be a boy, and to have the careless gaiety of boyish days." And so it is, that there are old young men, and young old men--some who are as joyous and cheerful as boys in their old age, and others who are as morose and cheerless as saddened old men while still in their boyhood.