By this time the elder Viscountess had grown tired again of the younger, and whenever she spoke of my lord’s widow, ’twas in terms by no means complimentary towards that poor lady:  the younger woman not needing her protection any longer, the elder abused her.  Most of the family quarrels that I have seen in life (saving always those arising from money disputes, when a division of twopence halfpenny will often drive the dearest relatives into war and estrangement,) spring out of jealousy and envy.  Jack and Tom, born of the same family and to the same fortune, live very cordially together, not until Jack is ruined when Tom deserts him, but until Tom makes a sudden rise in prosperity, which Jack can’t forgive.  Ten times to one ’tis the unprosperous man that is angry, not the other who is in fault.  ’Tis Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a chair, that sickens at Mrs. Tom’s new coach-and-sick, 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 horse back.  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 sponging-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.