A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit.

In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind.

Earthquakes do not shake him, he laughs at storms.

We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death.

Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of what we call a capacious mind, which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.