All the miseries and infelicities to which human nature is subject, are of three classes. Those to which we are immediately exposed from the imperfect state of our existence—those which are the concomitants of vice, folly and obstinacy, and those which by restlessness, impatience and apprehensions, we have portioned out to ourselves. The first, as they are inseparable from our nature, will always yield to the remedies of reason and philosophy; and instead of fruitless complaints and unavailing wishes for an amendment of that condition in which the divinity has thought fit to place us, we shall be enabled to support it with fortitude and thankfulness that it is not more intolerable. The second, as they are the immediate effects of our deviations from the paths of virtue, in direct opposition to sense and reflection, will cease when they become intolerable either from pain, remorse or disappointment; since we cannot suppose that a rational being will persist in the commission of actions repugnant to justice, goodness and truth, when he finds the happiness, pleasure or profit which he had in view, so far from being accomplished, that those very means which to him appeared the fairest and most likely to insure success, have been the chief instruments of disappointment. The first two general causes of human infelicity, we see then, may be obviated by the dictates of philosophy and the application of rational remedies, but we shall find the third much more obstinate. This impatience, this restlessness, this not dissatisfaction with our present condition, but frivolous apprehensions of the future, this disposition which changes that which nature has made so excellent, overturns the beautiful fabric of human happiness, mingles the bitterest ingredients with the cup of felicity, or dashes it from the lips of those for whom it has been prepared, this I say, is of such an unaccountable and inexplicable nature as would lead one to suppose no remedy could be found to remove. Who but a fool or hypochondriac could we suppose, when basking in the genial beams of a summer sun, and fanned by the cooling zephyrs, or sailing on a smooth sea under a serene sky, would torment himself with the apprehensions of storms and tempests? Who, but a madman would destroy the pleasures of a delightful landscape by reflecting, that in the course of a few months the fields will be stripped of their verdure, the groves of their shade, and the rivulet arrested in its course by the nipping breath of winter winds?