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Perils of Prosperity.
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Hercules tore from the brow of Achelous, when he attacked him in the shape of an ox, and which the Goddess of Plenty carries, filled with fruits and flowers, grows a very tiresome symbol to the satiated minions of fortune. They would gladly restore the horn to the ox's brow, if it would only toss up some enlivening and exciting incident, to break through the dreary monotony of their existence.

We are half inclined to believe that none of us enjoy any happiness fully, intensely, until we have been deprived of it for a season; or, at least, until we have learned its value by threatened loss.

There is a saying, (a French one, if we do not mistake,) that, "it is very easy to be amiable when one is happy." A state of unwonted happiness may temporarily expand the heart, and give birth to that merely external, smiling, social complaisance which passes for amiability; but habitual prosperity is not calculated to foster the sympathetic tenderness which deserves the name of amiability. Prosperity is apt to render us selfish, and unaware of, and uncareful for, the ills and privations of others. This is partly because we do not comprehend; we are not impressed by the contemplation of evils we have not ourselves endured. We see them only as in a picture—a very sad picture, perhaps, but one that quickly fades out of our memory, because no painful reality has been imparted to it through our own remembered experiences.

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