The selfishness—not to say the innate depravity—of human nature, as transmitted by historic inheritance, is such that every one who has not been regenerated by the reception or culture of a better spirit secretly craves a monopoly of the goods which command his desires. He dislikes his competitors, and would gladly defeat their designs and appropriate every waiting laurel to himself. In 1865 Forrest wrote, in a letter to Oakes, “Yes, my dear friend, there are many in this world who take pleasure in the misfortunes of their fellow-men and gloat over the miseries of their neighbors. And their envy, hatred, and malice are always manifested most towards men of positive natures.” Souls of a generous type leave this base temper behind, and rejoice in the glory of a rival as if it were their own. But mean souls, so far from taking a disinterested delight in the spectacle of triumphant genius or valor justly crowned with what it has justly won, are filled with pain at the sight, a pain obscenely mixed up with fear and hate. Wherever they see an illustrious head they would fain strike it down or spatter it with mud. Their perverse instincts regard every good of another as so much kept from them. There was a powerful passage in the play of Jack Cade which Forrest used to pronounce with tremendous effect, ingravidating every word with his own bitter experience of its truth: “Life’s story still! all would o’ertop their fellows; And every rank, the lowest, hath its height, To which hearts flutter with as large a hope As princes feel for empire! but in each Ambition struggles with a sea of hate. He who sweats up the ridgy grades of life Finds in each station icy scorn above; Below him, hooting envy!” The extent to which this dark and malign power operates in the breasts of men is fearful. The careless see it not, the innocent suspect it not; carefully disguising itself under all sorts of garbs, it dupes the superficial observer. But the wise and earnest student of human life who has had large experience knows that it is almost omnipresent. In every walk of society, every profession,—even in the Church and among the clergy,—are men who fear and hate their superiors simply because they are superior, and the inferiors feel themselves obscured and taunted by the superiority. A good free man loves to reverence a superior, feels himself blessed and helped in looking up. But the slave of egotism and envy feels elevated and enriched only in looking down on those he fancies less favored than himself. It is a frightful and disheartening phase of human nature; but it ought to be recognized, that we may be guarded against it in others and stimulated to outgrow it in ourselves.