There is a virtue even in the looks of a great man." When Niebuhr died, his friend, Frederick Perthes, said of him: "What a contemporary! The terror of all bad and base men, the stay of all the sterling and honest, the friend and helper of youth." Perthes said on another occasion: "It does a wrestling man good to be constantly surrounded by tried wrestlers; evil thoughts are put to flight when the eye falls on the portrait of one in whose living presence one would have blushed to own them." A Catholic money-lender, when about to cheat, was wont to draw a veil over the picture of his favourite saint.

So Hazlitt has said of the portrait of a beautiful female, that it seemed as if an unhandsome action would be impossible in its presence.

"It does one good to look upon his manly honest face," said a poor German woman, pointing to a portrait of the great Reformer hung upon the wall of her humble dwelling.
Even the portrait of a noble or a good man, hung up in a room, is companionship after a sort.

It gives us a closer personal interest in him.

Looking at the features, we feel as if we knew him better, and were more nearly related to him.