it is well aware none of
its praises will stick.

IT is the unhappy nature of envy not to be contented with positive
misery, but to be continually aggravating its own torments, by comparing
them with the felicities of others. The eyes of envy are perpetually
fixed on the object which disturbs it, nor can it avert them from it,
though to procure itself the relief of a temporary forgetfulness. On
seeing the innocence of the first pair,

Aside the devil turn'd,
For Envy, yet with jealous leer malign,
Eyed them askance.

As this enormous sin chiefly instigated the revolt, and brought on the
ruin of the angelic spirits, so it is not improbable, that it will be a
principal instrument of misery in a future world, for the envious to
compare their desperate condition with the happiness of the children of
God; and to heighten their actual wretchedness by reflecting on what
they have lost.

PERHAPS envy, like lying and ingratitude, is practised with more
frequency, because it is practised with impunity; but there being no
human laws against these crimes, is so far from an inducement to commit
them, that this very consideration would be sufficient to deter the wise
and good, if all others were ineffectual; for of how heinous a nature
must those sins be, which are judged above the reach of human
punishment, and are reserved for the final justice of God himself!

ON THE
DANGER
OF
SENTIMENTAL OR ROMANTIC
CONNEXIONS.

AMONG the many evils which prevail under the sun, the abuse of words is
not the least considerable. By the influence of time, and the perversion
of fashion, the plainest and most unequivocal may be so altered, as to
have a meaning assigned them almost diametrically opposite to their
original signification.

THE present age may be termed, by way of distinction, the age of
sentiment, a word which, in the implication it now bears, was unknown to
our plain ancestors. Sentiment is the varnish of virtue to conceal the
deformity of vice; and it is not uncommon for the same persons to make a
jest of religion, to break through the most solemn ties and engagements,
to practise every art of latent fraud and open seduction, and yet to
value themselves on speaking and writing _sentimentally_.

BUT this refined jargon, which has infested letters and tainted morals,
is chiefly admired and adopted by _young ladies_ of a certain turn, who
read _sentimental books_, write _sentimental lett