A WOLF, after devouring his prey, found a bone. stick in his throat, which gave him so much pain, that he went howling up and down, and importuning every creature he met to remove it; nay, he promised a reasonable reward to any one that should relieve him. At last the Crane, tempted with the hope of the reward, and having first made him confirm his promise with an oath, undertook the business, and ventured his long neck into the rapacious fellow's throat. Having plucked out the bone, he asked for the promised gratuity; when the Wolf, turning his eyes disdainfully towards him,

said, "I did not think you 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 overmuch 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.

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, yet forbore to ask first, hoping to receive a double quantity; for he concluded that all men's

wishes sympathized 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 This singu

passions prevailing in the heart of man. lar 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., 780) 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 distressed,
She bears her own tormentor in her breast.