7 Gift of John Harvey Treat Nor 23,10 38 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. CONTENTS Temptations to Wrong in the Pursuit of Wealth Evils occasioned by Procrastination We should have a becoming Confidence in our own Powers The Merit of Actions not to be judged by their Event Causes which produce Diversity of Opinion Immoderate Desires alike unpropitious to Virtue and Injustice of frivolously encroaching on the Time of Others Things the most necessary most easily obtained ESSAYS, &c. A SUSPICIOUS TEMPER HARDENS AND "You wonder I've so little wit, MART.-LEWIS's Trans. SUSPICION, however necessary it may be to our safe passage through ways beset on all sides by fraud and malice, has been always considered, when it exceeds the common measures, as a token of depravity and corruption; and a Greek writer of sentences has laid down, as a standing maxim, that he who believes not another on his oath knows himself to be perjured. We can form our opinions of that which we know not, only by placing it in comparison with something that we know; whoever, therefore, is overrun with suspicion, and detects artifice and stratagem in every proposal, must either have learned by experience or observation the wickedness of mankind, and been taught to avoid fraud by having often suf-fered or seen treachery, or he must derive his judgment from the consciousness of his own disposition, and impute to others the same inclinations which he feels predominant in himself. To learn caution by turning our eyes upon life, and observing the arts by which negligence is surprised, timidity overthrown, and credulity amused, |