Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/304

 powerful, and the expression of the face is keen, thoughtful, and somewhat stern.

"It is the likeness of a severe school-master of the world, whose tenderer side, with its capability of affection for friends and devotion towards women, is hardly traceable in the features. His health was good, though late in life he was subject to some kind of seizure. He was capable of the most unremitting activity; his limbs were big and strongly made. Suetonius tells us that he was an extremely skilful swordsman and horseman, and a good swimmer. All his contemporaries agree that he was very abstemious in regard to wine.…

"All were also agreed as to the steadiness and coolness of his temper; and the courteousness of his manner and bearing; indicating the possession of that high breeding which the Romans aptly termed 'humanitas.' On the whole, we may picture him to ourselves as a man the dignity of whose bodily presence was in due proportion to the greatness of his mental powers.…

"Such was the man who from his first campaign in Gaul to the end of his life, during fifteen years of continual labor, whether military or administrative, was always learning, noting, and advancing. No one can doubt this who reads his Commentaries carefully; with the object of discovering something of the nature of the man who wrote them."…

His "one leading characteristic as a man of action was that he never put his hand to a piece of work without carrying it through to the end; work was to him so absorbing and so necessary that he could entertain no visionary plans while it was still unfinished, and was content to let things take their course elsewhere, provided he himself were allowed to go through with what was before him." A grand characteristic for any man to have—or to teach his