“But Godfrey is happier than you, with all your refined feelings and cultivated tastes,” whispered the tempter to his soul.

“It cannot be,” returned the youth, as he communed with his own heart.  “The pleasures of sin may blind the mental vision, and blunt the senses, for a while; but when the terrible truth makes all things plain—­and the reaction comes—­and come it assuredly will—­and the mind, like a polluted stream, can no longer flow back to its own bright source, and renovate its poisoned waters; who shall then say that the madness of the sensualist can satisfy the heart?”

Thus did these two young men live together:  one endeavoring by the aid of religion, and by studying the wisdom of the past, to exalt and purify his fallen nature; the other by grovelling in the dust, and mingling with beings yet more sinful and degraded, rapidly debased his mind to a more degenerate and fallen state.

Godfrey Hurdlestone had always been covetous of his cousin’s anticipated wealth, but now he envied his good name, and the respect which his talents and good conduct entitled him to receive from his superiors, and he hated him accordingly.  He could not bear to see him courted and caressed by his worldly companions because he was the son of the rich miser, and himself thrown into the background, although in personal endowments he far surpassed his studious and retiring companion.  His own father, though reputed to be rich, was known to be in embarrassed circumstances, which the extravagance of his son was not likely to decrease.  Godfrey had no mental resource but in the society of persons whom Anthony despised; and he was daily annoyed by disparaging comparisons which the very worldlings he courted were constantly drawing between them.  “Oh envy!” well has it been said by the wisest of mankind, “who can stand before envy?”

Of all human passions, the meanest in its operations, the most fatal in its results, foul parent of the most revolting crimes.  If the heart is guarded against this passion, the path to heaven becomes easy of access, and the broad and dangerous way loses half its attractions.

Godfrey had forfeited his own self-respect, and he hated his cousin for possessing a jewel which he had cast away.  This aversion was strengthened by the anxious solicitude that Anthony expressed for his welfare, and the earnest appeals which he daily made to his conscience, to induce him to renounce his present destructive course, if not for his own, for his father’s sake.

Their studies were nearly completed, when the immense sums that Godfrey had squandered in dissipation and gambling obliged the Colonel to recall them home.

Algernon, although not a little displeased with his heartless selfish son, received the young men with his usual kindness, but there was a shade of care upon his broad open brow, which told to Anthony a tale of anxiety and suffering, that caused him the deepest pain.  As two whole years must necessarily elapse before Anthony could enter into holy orders, he determined to prosecute his studies in the country with their worthy curate, Mr. Grant, a gentleman of great learning, piety, and worth.