You observe yonder lynx-eyed individual moving slowly along. He sees all that is passing within vision around him. His two eyes seem to answer the purposes of a hundred, and are constantly in motion. Although everything within their range falls under their quick and penetrating scrutiny, they behold nothing to admire or to make him glad. They might as well gaze upon an utter blank, and certainly he would experience more comfort should they recognise only a wide and dismal waste instead of prosperity and happiness. He is as despicable a victim of envy as the world ever saw, which simply moves him to hate the success of those around him, and repine at their happiness. He can only find gratification in their distress and joy in their calamities. A tinge of envy, however much descried, is sometimes productive of good results, for I have known it to prove an incentive to exertion where all else had failed; but when permanently retained, it becomes the powerful and fertile cause of hypocricies, lies, deceits, treacheries, slanders, annihilating every good quality in nature, and yet unsatisfied, still adding fuel to its evil ones. That man would not hesitate to blast the qualities of your brain, merely because he cannot bear your superiority; nor would he pause to ruin you in your possessions, although he should not derive the least profit from it. Whilst, however, he discovers pleasure in the ruin alike of those above and below him, he finds a vulture in his evil passion, which, “like iron over-run with rust, not only defiles, but destroys himself continually.” It is well, reflected Peter, that passions which can only experience delight in the evil fate of others, should likewise make a meal upon their possessor, and that whilst he smiles upon the calamities of the unfortunate, his smile should be but an expression of his inward torture. There you may recognise a bald-pated knave, whose age, instead of preserving him from the snares of the young, only seems to encourage and embolden him the more. He is in company with his son-in-law, to whom he once refused to give his daughter’s hand in marriage, for reasons which he did not care to make known either to her or his household. The vigilance and curiosity of those less interested, however, soon succeeded in ascertaining them, and the discovery afforded no little amusement at his perplexity. The chief priests and scribes were not in a greater quandary when they had the choice to say “yea,” and be convicted of their baseness, or “nay,” and be stoned by the people. He had too often met the aspirant to his daughter’s hand at places of resort where none of our community who values his moral character is likely to go. Peter was somewhat at a loss here, yet he could not help reflecting that the father who visits places of crime, is in a very ridiculous dilemma when compelled to make use of his personal knowledge and his own dishonor to preserve the reputation of his family.