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that man is not tried whether he be good or bad; and God never crowns those virtues which are only faculties and dispositions."

It is indisputable that those individuals who have been permitted a long period of unshadowed prosperity, seldom prize their own rich store—are seldom conscious of its opulence—are often as poor in real enjoyment, (we might say poorer) than those who have known great reverses. Shakspeare tells us "they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing;" and, in truth, they lose the appetite, and the power of tasting, which gives to the hungry man's simplest food its keen relish.

Let the sun always shine and the tired eye will soon be dazzled by its ceaseless glare, and be blinded to objects rendered beautiful by its radiance. "The rays of happiness, like the light, are colorless when unbroken," writes Longfellow. Untempered sunshine withers the fruits of the intellect, as of the orchard. Clouds, and cooling shadows, and refreshing rain, are as needful for mental as for natural growth. Without them the soil is parched and hardened, and its fairest products wither. Ambition is dwarfed by prosperity, which leaves nothing to seek, nothing to desire. The energies droop like wilted leaves. The soul grows lethargic and feeble, and is in peril of being stricken with what has forcibly been styled a "moral coup de soleil." That cornucopia which