This is certainly a much more cheerful view of human nature than that of Lord Chesterfield, who saw life through the eyes of a cynic, and held that "the heart never grows better by age: it only grows harder." But both sayings may be true according to the point from which life is viewed, and the temper by which a man is governed; for while the good, profiting by experience, and disciplining themselves by self-control, will grow better, the ill-conditioned, uninfluenced by experience, will only grow worse.
Sir Walter Scott was a man full of the milk of human kindness.

Everybody loved him.

He was never five minutes in a room ere the little pets of the family, whether dumb or lisping, had found out his kindness for all their generation.

Scott related to Captain Basil Hall an incident of his boyhood which showed the tenderness of his nature.

One day, a dog coming towards him, he took up a big stone, threw it, and hit the dog.