And, again, quite as important as bodily health and freedom from anxiety is the possession of a certain childlike freshness of character; a simplicity which enables men and women, even in old age, to enjoy such innocent pleasures as come in their way without finding them pall, or despising them as not worth their acceptance. Great minds and men of genius seem generally specially gifted with this invaluable attribute of perennial youth; while little souls, full of their own petty importance and vanities, lose it before they are well out of the school-room. The late sculptor, John Gibson (whose works will be, perhaps, appreciated when all the monstrosities of modern English statuary are consigned to the lime-kiln), used to say in his old age that he wished he could live over again every day and hour of his past life precisely as he had spent it. Let the reader measure what this means in the mouth of a man of transparent veracity, and it will appear that the speaker must needs have carried on through his seventy years the freshness of heart of a boy, never wearied by his ardent pursuit of the Beautiful, and supported by the consciousness that this pursuit was not wholly in vain. People who are always “looking for the next thing,” taking each pleasure not as pleasure _per se_, but merely as a useful stepping-stone to something else which may possibly be pleasure, or as a subject to be talked of; people who are always climbing, like boys at a fair, up the slippery pole of ambition,—cannot possibly know the meaning of such genuine and ever fresh enjoyment. Is a man likely to grow more or less simple-hearted and single-minded in Town or in the Country? Alas! there can be little or no doubt that London life is a sad trial to all such simplicity; and that nothing is more difficult than to preserve, in its hot, stifling atmosphere, the freshness and coolness of any flower of sentiment, or the glory of any noble, unselfish enthusiasm. Social wear and tear, and the tone of easy-letting-down commonly adopted by men of the world towards any lofty aspiration, compel those who would fain cherish generous and conscientious motives to cloak them under the guise of a hobby or a whim, and, before many years are over, the glow and bloom of almost every enthusiasm is rubbed off and spoiled.