public envy, whereas in private there is none; for public envy is as an ostracism, that eclipseth men when they grow too great; and therefore it is a bridle also to great ones to keep within bounds.

This envy, being in the Latin word 'invidia,' goeth in the modern languages by the name of discontentment, of which we shall speak in handling sedition. It is a disease in a State like to infection; for as infection spreadeth upon that which is sound, and tainteth it, so, when envy is gotten once into a State, it traduceth even the best actions thereof, and turneth them into an ill odour; and therefore there is little won by intermingling of plausible' actions; for that doth argue but a weakness and fear of envy, which hurteth so much the more; as it is likewise usual in infections, which, if you fear them, you call them upon you.

This public envy seemeth to bear chiefly upon principal officers or ministers, rather than upon kings and States themselves. But this is a sure rule, that if the envy upon the minister be great, when the cause of it in him is small, or if the envy be general in a manner upon all the ministers of an estate, then the envy (though hidden) is truly upon the State itself. And so much of public envy or discontentment, and the difference thereof from private envy, which was handled in the first place.

We will add this in general, touching the affection of envy, that of all other affections it is the most importune and continual; for of other affections there is occasion given but now and then; and therefore it was well said, 'Invidia festos dies non agit,' for it is ever working upon some or other. And it is also noted, that love and envy do make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual. It is also the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the Devil, who is called The

1 Plausible. Deserving to meet with applause. I hope they will plausibly receive our attempt.'-Brown.

2

* Importune. Importunate; troublesome from frequency.

'More shall thy penitent sighs, his endless mercy please

Than their importune suits which dreame that words God's wrath appease.'

3 Envy keeps no holidays.'.

Surrey.

envious man, that soweth tares among the wheat by night;' as it always cometh to pass, that envy worketh subtilely, and in the dark, and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat.

There seemeth to be acknowledged, in the act of envy, an ejaculation or irradiation of the eye?'

There is a curious passage on this subject in a very able article in the North British Review (Aug. 1857), which I will take the liberty of citing.

'We once, in Cairo, conversed on this superstition with an intelligent Cairene, who described it as the great curse of his country.

Does the mischievous influence of the evil eye,' we asked, 'depend on the will of the person whose glance does the mischief?'

"Not altogether,' he answered. An intention to harm may render more virulent the poison of the glance; but envy, or the desire to appropriate a thing, or even excessive admiration, may render it hurtful without the consciousness, or even against the will, of the offender. It injures most the thing that it first hits. Hence the bits of red cloth that are stuck about the dresses of women, and about the trappings of camels and horses, and the large spots of lamp black which you may see on the foreheads of children. They are a sort of conductors. It is hoped that they will attract the glance, and exhaust its venom.'

"A fine house, fine furniture, a fine camel, and a fine horse, are all enjoyed with fear and trembling, lest they should excite envy and bring misfortune. A butcher would be afraid to expose fine meat, lest the evil eye of passers-by, who might covet it, should taint it, and make it spoil, or become unwholesome.'

"Children are supposed to be peculiarly the objects of desire and admiration. When they are suffered to go abroad, they are intentionally dirty and ill-dressed; but generally they are kept at home, without air or exercise, but safe from admiration. This occasions a remarkable difference between the infant mortality in Europe and in Egypt. In Europe it is the children of the rich who live; in Egypt, it is the children of the poor. The children of the poor cannot be confined. They live in the fields. As soon as you quit the city, you see in every clover field a group, of which the centre is a tethered buffalo, and round it are the children of its owner, with their provision of bread and water, sent thither at sunrise and to remain there till sunset, basking in the sun, and breathing the air from the desert. The Fellah children enter their hovels only to sleep and that only in the winter. In summer, their days and nights are passed in the open air; and, notwithstanding their dirt and their bad food, they grow up healthy and vigorous. The children of the rich, confined by the fear of the evil eye to the 'hareem,' are puny creatures, of whom not a fourth part reaches adolescence. Achmed Pasha Tahir, one of the governors of Cairo under Mehemet Ali, had 280 children; only six survived him. Mehemet Ali himself had 87; only ten were living at his death.'

"I believe,' he added, 'that at the bottom of this superstition is an enormous prevalence of envy among the lower Egyptians. You see it in all their fictions. Half of the stories told in the coffee-shops by the professional story-tellers, of which the Arabian Nights are a specimen, turn on malevolence. Malevolence, not attributed, as it would be in European fiction, to some insult or injury inflicted by the person who is its object, but to mere envy: envy of wealth, or of the other means of enjoyment, honourably acquired and liberally used.'' (Pages 10-11.)

In Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, the following

H

admirable remarks are made on the envy that attends a sudden rise:

The man who, by some sudden revolution of fortune, is lifted up all at once into a condition of life greatly above what he had formerly lived in, may be assured that the congratulations of his best friends are not all of them perfectly sincere. An upstart, though of the greatest merit, is generally disagreeable, and a sentiment of envy commonly prevents us from heartily sympathizing with his joy. If he has any judgment, he is sensible of this, and instead of appearing to be elated with his good fortune, he endeavours, as much as he can, to smother his joy, and keep down that elevation of mind with which his new circumstances naturally inspire him. He affects the same plainness of dress, and the same modesty of behaviour, which became him in his former station. He redoubles his attention to his old friends, and endeavours more than ever to be humble, assiduous, and complaisant. And this is the behaviour which in his situation we must approve of; because, we expect, it seems, that he should have more sympathy with our envy and aversion to his happiness, than we have with his happiness. It is seldom that with all this he succeeds. We suspect the sincerity of his humility, and he grows weary of this constraint. In a little time, therefore, he generally leaves all his old friends behind him, some of the meanest of them excepted, who may, perhaps, condescend to become his dependents: nor does he always acquire any new ones; the pride of his new connections is as much affronted at finding him their equal, as that of his old ones had been by his becoming their superior: and it requires the most obstinate and persevering modesty to atone for this mortification to either. He generally grows weary too soon, and is provoked, by the sullen and suspicious pride of the one, and by the saucy contempt of the other, to treat the first with neglect, and the second with petulance, till at last he grows habitually insolent, and forfeits the esteem of all. If the chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved, as I believe it does, those sudden changes of fortune seldom contribute much to happiness. He is happiest who advances more gradually to greatness; whom the Public destines to every step of his preferment long before he arrives at it; in whom, upon that account, when it comes, it can excite no ex

travagant joy, and with regard to whom it cannot reasonably create either any jealousy in those he overtakes, or any envy in those he leaves behind."1

'Persons of eminent virtue, when they are advanced, are less envied?

Bacon might have remarked that, in one respect a rise by merit exposes a man to more envy than that by personal favour, through family connection, private friendship, &c. For, in this latter case, the system itself of preferring private considerations to public, is chiefly blamed, but the individual thus advanced is regarded much in the same way as one who is born to an estate or a title. But when any one is advanced on the score of desert and qualifications, the system is approved, but the individual is more envied, because his advancement is felt as an affront to all who think themselves or their own friends more worthy. It is quite right to advance men of great merit; but by this rule, it is I, or my friend So-and-so that should have been preferred.' When, on the other hand, a bishop or a minister appoints his own son or private friend to some office, every one else is left free to think' If it had gone by merit, I should have been the man.'

When any person of really eminent virtue becomes the object of envy, the clamour and abuse by which he is assailed, is but the sign and accompaniment of his success in doing service to the Public. And if he is a truly wise man, he will take no more notice of it than the moon does of the howling of the dogs. Her only answer to them is 'to shine on.'

This public envy seemeth to bear chiefly upon principal officers or ministers, rather than upon kings.'

This is a very just remark, and it might have suggested an excellent argument (touched on in the Lessons on the British Constitution) in favour of hereditary Royalty. It is surely a good thing that there should be some feeling of loyalty unalloyed by envy, towards something in the Government. And this

1 Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, chap. v.

* See Introductory Lessons on the British Constitution, lesson i,