man can properly be termed rich whose fortune is at the mercy of the
winds. The beauty adorned only with the unambitious graces of innocence
and modesty, provokes, whenever she appears, a thousand murmurs of
detraction and whispers of suspicion. The genius, even when he
endeavours only to entertain with pleasing; images of nature, or
instruct by uncontested principles of science, yet suffers persecution
from innumerable critics, whose acrimony is excited merely by the pain
of seeing others pleased--of hearing applauses which another enjoys.

The frequency of envy makes it so familiar that it escapes our notice;
nor do we often reflect upon its turpitude or malignity, till we happen
to feel its influence. When he that has given no provocation to malice,
but by attempting to excel in some useful art, finds himself pursued by
multitudes whom he never saw with implacability of personal resentment;
when he perceives clamour and malice let loose upon him as a public
enemy, and incited by every stratagem of defamation; when he hears the
misfortunes of his family or the follies of his youth exposed to the
world; and every failure of conduct, or defect of nature, aggravated and
ridiculed; he then learns to abhor those artifices at which he only
laughed before, and discovers how much the happiness of life would be
advanced by the eradication of envy from the human heart.

Envy is, indeed, a stubborn weed of the mind, and seldom yields to the
culture of philosophy. There are, however, considerations which, if
carefully implanted, and diligently propagated, might in time overpower
and repress it, since no one can nurse it for the sake of pleasure, as
its effects are only shame, anguish, and perturbation. It is, above all
other vices, inconsistent with the character of a social being, because
it sacrifices truth and kindness to very weak temptations. He that
plunders a wealthy neighbour, gains as much as he takes away, and