will be apt to despise their less successful competitors, who, in return, will feel the bitterest resentment against their more for tunate rivals. Among persons of real goodness, this jealousy and contempt, can never be equally felt, because every advancement. in piety, will be attended with a proportionable encrease of humility, which will lead them to contemplate their own improvements with modesty, and to view with charity the miscarriages of others.

When an envious man is melancholy, one may ask him, in the words of Bion,What evil has befallen himself, or what good has happened to another? This last is the scale by which he principally measures his felicity, and the very smiles of his friends are so many deductions from his own happiness.

The wants of others is the standard by which he rates his own wealth, and he estimates his riches, not so much by his own possessions, as by the necessities of his naighbours..

When the malevolent intend to strike a very deep and dangerous stroke of malice, they generally begin the most remotely from the subject nearest their hearts. They set out with commending the object of their envy for some trifling quality or advantage, which it is scarcely worth while to possess. They next proceed to make a ge neral profession of their own good-will and regard for him. Thus, artfully removing any suspicion of their designs, and clearing all obstructions for the insidious wound they are about to give: for who will suspect them of an. intention to injure the object of their peculiar and professed esteem ?

Anger is less reasonable and more sincere than envy-anger breaks out abruptly—envy is a great prefacer-anger wishes to be under-. stood at once-envy is fond of remote hints and ambiguities, but obscure as its oracles are, it never ceases to deliver them until they are perfectly comprehended. Anger gives a broken, vehement, and interrupted narrative-envy tells a more consistent, and more probable, though a falser tale.

Anger never consults times or seasonsenvy waits for the lucky moment, when the blow it meditates may be made the most exquisitely, and the most incurably deep. Simple anger soon runs itself out of breath, and is exhausted at the end of its tale; but, it is for that chosen period that envy has treasured up the most barbed arrow, in its whole quiver.

Anger puts a man out with himself; but the truly malicious, generally preserve the appearance of self-possession, or they could not so effectually injure. The angry man sets out, by destroying his whole credit with you at once; for he very frankly confesses his abhorrence, and detestation of the object of his abuse, while the envious man, carefully suppresses all his own share in the affair.

The angry man defeats the end of his resentment, by keeping himself continually before your eyes, instead of his enemy; while the envious man wilfully brings forward the object of his malice, and keeps himself

out of sight. The angry man talks loudly of his own wrongs; the envious, of his adversary's injustice. A passionate person, if his resentments are not complicated with malice, divides his time, between sinning and sorrowing, and as the irascible passions cannot constantly be at work, his heart may sometimes get a holiday.

Anger is a violent act-envy a constant habit: No one can be always angry, but he may be always envious. An angry man's enmity (if he be generous,) will subside, when the object of his resentment becomes unfortunate; but the envious man can extract food for his malice, out of calamity itself, if he finds his adversary bears it with dignity, or is pitied, or assisted in it. The rage of the passionate man is totally extinguished by the death of his enemy; but the hatred of the malicious is not buried, even in the grave of his rival-He will envy the good name he has left behind him; he will envy him the tears of his widow, the prosperity of his children, the esteem

of his friends, the praises of his epitaph, nay, the very magnificence of his funeral. The ear of jealousy, heareth all things, (says the wise man,) frequently, I believe, more than is uttered, which makes the company of the persons infected with it still more dangerous. When you tell those of an envious disposition, any circumstance that has happened to another, though they perfectly know of whom you are speaking, they often affect to be at a loss-to forget his name, or to misapprehend you in some respect or other, and this merely, to have a greater opportunity of slily gratifying their malice, by mentioning some unhappy defect, or personal infirmity he labours under; and not contented, "to tack his every error to his name," they will, by way of further explanation, have recourse to the faults of his father, or the misfortunes of his family; and this, with all the seeming simplicity and candour in the world, merely for the sake of preventing mistakes, and to clear up every doubt of his identity. If you are