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Upon the same principle should we avoid the man who mistrusts the motives of his fellow men, who always suspects that selfishness is the secret spring of every fair-seeming action, who mistakes courtesy for policy, who disbelieves in the genuineness of Virtue until she has passed through some fiery ordeal with unscathed garments, and thus proved her supernal origin.

"Treat your friends as though they might one day become your enemies," is the advice of these graduates of wisdom's worldly school; but he who darkens the genial sunshine of friendship by the shadow of this anticipated enmity, is incapable of becoming a disinterested friend. His admission of the possibility of change in another reveals the instability of his own sentiments.

When we speak of trusting natures we do not mean temperaments that are simply credulous, that, without reflection or discrimination, impulsively accept all offered hands, and believe all uttered professions, from a sort of quick-swallowing credulity, as capacious as Garagantua's mouth. By the trustful we designate those who are not given to causeless misgivings, who confide, where they love, with an unquestioning, uncalculating simplicity, a gentle reliance, which sometimes evokes sincerity even out of falsehood. Their trustfulness is often an unconscious shield, which turns aside the weapons of the wiley, and makes Deception blush and lay down her arms, as a giant