If we may change our temperament both of body and mind for evil, as innumerable examples prove that we may, why not as easily for good? Our habits certainly are under our control; and our modes of thinking, however little the process may have been explained, are, in some way, shaped by our voluntary discipline. We have high powers of self-command, as every one who has made the effort to exercise them, must be conscious. We have inexhaustible moral force for self-direction, if we will only recognise and exert it. We owe most of our disgusts and disappointments, our corroding passions and unreasonable desires, our fretfulness, gloom and self-torment, neither to nature nor fate; but to ourselves, and our reckless indifference to those rules, that ought to guide our pursuit of happiness. Let a higher education and a truer wisdom disenthral us from our passions, and dispel the mists of opinion and silence the authority of example. Let us commence the pursuit of happiness on the right course, and seek it where alone it is to be found. Equanimity and moderation will shed their mild radiance upon our enjoyments; and in our reverses we shall summon resignation and force of character; and, according to the sublime ancient maxim, we shall become masters of events and of ourselves. I am sensible that there will always be a sufficient number of those, deemed philosophers, who, notwithstanding their rules, have wandered far from their aim. Such there will always be, so long as there are stirring passions within or hidden dangers around us; and there will be shipwrecks, so long as human cupidity and ambition tempt self-confident and unskilful mariners upon the fickle and tumultuous bosom of the ocean. But is this proof that a disciplined pilot would not be most likely to make the voyage in safety, or that the study of navigation is useless? My affectionate desire is, to draw your attention to those moral resources which your Creator has placed at your command. How many millions have floated down the current in the indolent supineness of inactivity, who, had they been aware of their internal means of active resistance, would have risen above the pressure of their circumstances! Who can deny, that there is a manifest difference, even as things now are, between the moral courage of action and endurance, put forth by a disciplined and reflecting mind, possessing force of character, and the stupid and passive abandonment, with which a savage meets pain and death? May you speed on your voyage under the influence of the _lucida sidera_, or, in higher phrase, may Providence be your guide. LETTER II. THE PHYSICAL, ORGANIC AND MORAL LAWS.