for dancing or singing much better than her sister, and the sister
taunted into further efforts by insulting comparisons, the poor mistaken
parent little thinks that, in the pain she inflicts on the depreciated
child, she is implanting a perennial root of danger and sorrow. The
child may cry and sob at the time, and afterward feel uncomfortable in
the presence of one whose superiority has been made the means of
worrying her; and, if envious by nature, she will probably take the
first opportunity of pointing out to the teachers any little error of
her sister's. The permanent injury, however, remains to be effected when
they both grow to woman's estate; the envious sister will then take
every artful opportunity of lessening the influence of the one who is
considered her superior, of insinuating charges against her to those
whose good opinion they both value the most. And she is only too easily
successful; she is successful, that success may bring upon her the
penalty of her sin, for Heaven is then the most incensed against us when
our sin appears to prosper. Various and inexhaustible are the mere
temporal punishments of this sin of envy; of the sin which deprives
another of even one shade of the influence, admiration, and affection,
they would otherwise have enjoyed.

If the preference of a female friend excites angry and jealous feelings,
the attentions of an admirer are probably still more envied. In some
unhappy families, one may observe the beginning of any such attentions
by the vigilant depreciation of the admirer, and the anxious
manoeuvres to prevent any opportunities of cultivating the detected
preference. What prosperity can be hoped for to a family in which the
supposed advantage and happiness of one individual member is feared and
guarded against, instead of being considered an interest belonging to
the whole? You will be shocked at such pictures as these: alas! that
they should be so frequent even in domestic England, the land of happy