The best people are apt to have their impatient side; and often, the very temper which makes men earnest, makes them also intolerant.

[1510] "Of all mental gifts," says Miss Julia Wedgwood, "the rarest is intellectual patience; and the last lesson of culture is to believe in difficulties which are invisible to ourselves." The best corrective of intolerance in disposition, is increase of wisdom and enlarged experience of life.

Cultivated good sense will usually save men from the entanglements in which moral impatience is apt to involve them; good sense consisting chiefly in that temper of mind which enables its possessor to deal with the practical affairs of life with justice, judgment, discretion, and charity.

Hence men of culture and experience are invariably, found the most forbearant and tolerant, as ignorant and narrowminded persons are found the most unforgiving and intolerant.

Men of large and generous natures, in proportion to their practical wisdom, are disposed to make allowance for the defects and disadvantages of others--allowance for the controlling power of circumstances in the formation of character, and the limited power of resistance of weak and fallible natures to temptation and error.