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of that blessed faculty which lines all the clouds with silver.

Wealth cannot be computed by our actual possessions, but by the exorbitance or moderation of our desires; nor happiness gauged by the enjoyments within our grasp, but by those after which we aspire. Sunny temperaments smilingly deem whatever they receive sufficient, and neither their affluence nor their felicity have regard to pounds and pence, weights and measures. To them Poverty wears the graceful robes of Content, and would look no fairer in the diadem of luxury. To them the stream of sorrow is like that fountain of Anletus, which rose salted from the earth, but sweetened in its course, for their grief can have no lasting taste of bitterness. There is a clear, blue firmament in their souls where the star of Hope always shines, piercing the most noisome vapors that ascend from a pestilential world beneath.

Alas! how few is the number of these bright and brightening natures! How countless are the hosts of those who resolutely turn their eyes from the golden lights gleaming through the darkness of life's picture; who, with irrational perversity, augment all its shadows! who, when calamities threaten, experience all their anguish in anticipation; who, when sorrows really arrive, magnify their sum; and who, even when griefs are removed, cling to their sombre remembrance, and torture themselves with evoking phantoms of departed wo!