had been so unconscionable.

I had your head in my

mouth, and could have bit it off whenever I pleased, but suffered you to take it away without any damage; and yet you are not contented."

MORAL. No one should risk over-much his own safety to help another.

APPLICATION. This fable may appear to some persons to be a caricature rather than a picture; yet the author represents in it a true phase of human nature. There are persons to be met with so strangely infatuated with a sense of their own superiority to the rest of mankind, either by their long ancestry or their personal attractiveness, as to consider any service done them to be a due acknowledgment of their superiority. These persons would seem by their conduct to imply that they themselves were conferring a privilege rather than otherwise on those from whom they accept favours, and consider themselves exempt from all need of expressions of gratitude or thankfulness. Many a man has gone out of his way, and done injury to himself, in his desire to assist a friend, while that friend has laughed at him for his pains, and deemed his kindness folly. This fable teaches the imprudence of exposing ourselves to harm for unworthy persons, with the expectation of meeting with an adequate return from the persons for whom we expose ourselves to risk.

It behoves us to know well the person in whom we place confidence. He who trusts in a man void of any sense of honourable feeling will sooner or later smart for it.

If thou lovest to be charitable, do

So good to others that it hurt not you.

THE ENVIOUS MAN AND THE COVETOUS.

AN Envious Man happened to be offering up his prayers to Jupiter just in the time and place with a man noted for his covetousness. Jupiter, not caring to be troubled with their importunities himself, sent Apollo to examine the merits of their respective petitions, and to give each such relief as he should think proper. Apollo, therefore, having ascertained their failings, told them that whatever the one asked, the other should have it double. Upon this, the Covetous Man, though he had a thousand things to request, vet forbore to ask first, hoping to receive a double

quantity; for he concluded that all men's wishes sympathised with his own. By this means the Envious Man had an opportunity of preferring his petition first, which was the thing he aimed at; so, without much hesitation, he prayed to be relieved by having one of his eyes put out; knowing that, of consequence, his companion would be deprived of both.

MORAL. Envy shoots at another, and wounds itself.

APPLICATION. The poets and moralists of all nations have allotted to envy a place among the passions prevailing in the heart of man. This singular affection combines in itself the worst features of jealousy and selfishness, and yet is distinct from either. It is a hatred of others for their excellence, happiness, or reputation; a grief of heart arising from witnessing another's prosperity. It is generally associated with a spirit of the deadliest malignity, amounting in its intensity to the violence of a monomania, and graphically described in this fable. Ovid (Metamorphoses, ii. 770) gives a fine description of envy, 'of which these lines are a translation :

Restless in spite, while watchful to destroy,
She pines and sickens at another's joy;
Foe to herself, distressing and distrest,
She bears her own tormentor in her breast.

Of all the evil inclinations to which humanity is heir, this passion appears to the person not under its sway the meanest and most unaccountable. It seems almost impossible to believe that any human being can wish for evils on a fellow-creature who has not injured him, or can take pleasure in troubles and calamities happening to another, merely because he is happier or more esteemed than himself. Yet such feelings do often occupy the guest-chamber of the soul.

Few have the fortitude of soul to honour
A friend's success without a touch of envy;
For that malignant passion to the heart
Cleaves sore, and with a double burden loads
The man infected with it. First, he feels
In all their weight his own calamities,
Then sighs to see the happiness of others.

This strange, and at first sight mysterious, fable (than which none in the whole cycle of these stories is more true to human nature) exactly describes this passion of envy, which sickens at another's joy. A perfect representation of its workings in the human heart is given by its picture of a man who is willing to lose an eye, that he might cause the loss of both eyes to the object of his envy and dislike. How utterly opposed are these sentiments to the exhortation, Rejoice with them that do rejoice"!

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The man who envies, must behold with pain
Another's joy, and sicken at his gain.