ch-and-six, cries out against her sister's airs, and sets her
husband against his brother. 'Tis Jack who sees his brother shaking hands
with a lord (with whom Jack would like to exchange snuff-boxes himself),
that goes home and tells his wife how poor Tom is spoiled, he fears, and
no better than a sneak, parasite, and beggar on horseback. I remember how
furious the coffee-house wits were with Dick Steele when he set up his
coach, and fine house in Bloomsbury: they began to forgive him when the
bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick's
country-house. And yet Dick in the spunging-house, or Dick in the Park,
with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle,
kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly
right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of
his just claim, to be spent by Dick upon champagne and fiddlers, laced
clothes, fine furniture, and parasites, Jew and Christian, male and
female, who clung to him. As, according to the famous maxim of Monsieur de
Rochefoucault, "in our friends' misfortunes there's something secretly
pleasant to us"; so, on the other hand, their good fortune is
disagreeable. If 'tis hard for a man to bear his own good luck, 'tis
harder still for his friends to bear it for him; and but few of them
ordinarily can stand that trial: whereas one of the "precious uses" of
adversity is, that it is a great reconciler; that it brings back averted
kindness, disarms animosity, and causes yesterday's enemy to fling his
hatred aside, and hold out a hand to the fallen friend of old days.
There's pity and love, as well as envy, in the same heart and towards the
same person. The rivalry stops when the competitor tumbles; and, as I view
it, we should look at these agreeable and disagreeable qualities of our
humanity humbly alike. They are consequent and natural, and our kindness
and meanness both manly.

So you may either read the sentence, that the elder of Esmond's two
kinswomen pardoned the younger her beauty, when that had lost somewhat of
its freshness, perhaps; and forgot most her grievances against the other,
when the subject of them was no longer prosperous and enviable; or we may
say more benevolently (but the sum comes to the same figures, worked
either way), that Isabella repented of her unkindness towards Rachel, when
Rachel was unhappy; and, bestirring herself in behalf of the poor widow
and her childr