Is there a reader so little experienced in the human heart, so forgetful of his own, as not to feel the possibility of the following fact?

A series of uncommon calamities had been for many years the lot of the elder Henry; a succession of prosperous events had fallen to the share of his brother William. The one was the envy, while the other had the compassion, of all who thought about them. For the last twenty years, William had lived in affluence, bordering upon splendour, his friends, his fame, his fortune, daily increasing, while Henry throughout that very period had, by degrees, lost all he loved on earth, and was now existing apart from civilised society; and yet, during those twenty years, where William knew one happy moment, Henry tasted hundreds.

That the state of the mind, and not outward circumstances, is the nice point on which happiness depends is but a trite remark; but that intellectual power should have the force to render a man discontented in extraordinary prosperity, such as that of the present bishop, or contented in his brother’s extreme of adversity, requires illustration.

The first great affliction to Henry was his brother’s ingratitude; but reasoning on the frailty of man’s nature, and the force of man’s temptations, he found excuses for William, which made him support the treatment he had received with more tranquillity than William’s proud mind supported his brother’s marriage.

Henry’s indulgent disposition made him less angry with William than William was with him.

The next affliction Henry suffered was the loss of his beloved wife. That was a grief which time and change of objects gradually alleviated; while William’s wife was to him a permanent grief, her puerile mind, her talking vanity, her affected virtues, soured his domestic comfort, and, in time, he had suffered more painful moments from her society than his brother had experienced, even from the death of her he loved.

In their children, indeed, William was the happier; his son was a pride and pleasure to him, while Henry never thought upon his without lamenting his loss with bitterest anguish. But if the elder brother had in one instance the advantage, still Henry had a resource to overbalance this article. Henry, as he lay imprisoned in his dungeon, and when, his punishment being remitted, he was again allowed to wander, and seek his subsistence where he would, in all his tedious walks and solitary resting-places, during all his lonely days and mournful nights, had this resource to console him—

“I never did an injury to any one; never was harsh, severe, unkind, deceitful. I did not merely confine myself to do my neighbour no harm; I strove to do him service.”

This was the resource that cheered his sinking heart amidst gloomy deserts and a barbarous people, lulled him to peaceful slumber in the hut of a savage hunter, and in the hearing of the lion’s roar, at times impressed him with a sense of happiness, and made him contemplate with a longing hope the retribution of a future world.

The bishop, with all his comforts, had no comfort like this; he had his solitary reflections too, but they were of a tendency the reverse of these. “I used my brother ill,” was a secret thought of most powerful influence. It kept him waking upon his safe and commodious bed; was sure to recur with every misfortune by which he was threatened to make his fears still stronger, and came with invidious stabs, upon every successful event, to take from him a part of his joy. In a word, it was conscience which made Henry’s years pass happier than William’s.

But though, comparatively with his brother, William was the less happy man, yet his self-reproach was not of such magnitude, for an offence of that atrocious nature as to banish from his breast a certain degree of happiness, a sensibility to the smiles of fortune; nor was Henry’s self-acquittal of such exquisite kind as to chase away the feeling of his desolate condition.

As he fished or hunted for his daily dinner, many a time in full view of his prey, a sudden burst of sorrow at his fate, a sudden longing for some dear associate, for some friend to share his thoughts, for some kind shoulder on which to lean his head, for some companion to partake of his repast, would make him instantaneously desist from his pursuit, cast him on the ground in a fit of anguish, till a shower of tears and his conscience came to his relief.

It was, after an exile of more than twenty-three years, when, on one sultry morning, after pleasant dreams during the night, Henry had waked with more than usual perception of his misery, that, sitting upon the beach, his wishes and his looks all bent on the sea towards his native land, he thought he saw a sail swelling before an unexpected breeze.

“Sure I am dreaming still!” he cried. “This is the very vessel I last night saw in my sleep! Oh! what cruel mockery that my eyes should so deceive me!”

Yet, though he doubted, he leaped upon his feet in transport, held up his hands, stretched at their length, in a kind of ecstatic joy, and, as the glorious sight approached, was near rushing into the sea to hail and meet it.

For awhile hope and fear kept him in a state bordering on distraction.

Now he saw the ship making for the shore, and tears flowed for the grateful prospect. Now it made for another point, and he vented shrieks and groans from the disappointment.

It was at those moments, while hope and fear thus possessed him, that the horrors of his abode appeared more than ever frightful. Inevitable afflictions must be borne; but that calamity which admits the expectation of relief, and then denies it, is insupportable.

After a few minutes passed in dreadful uncertainty, which enhanced the wished-for happiness, the ship evidently drew near the land; a boat was launched from her, and while Henry, now upon his knees, wept and prayed fervently for the event, a youth sprang from the barge on the strand, rushed towards him, and falling on his neck, then at his feet, exclaimed, “My father! oh, my father!”

William! dean! bishop! what are your honours, what your riches, what all your possessions, compared to the happiness, the transport bestowed by this one sentence, on your poor brother Henry?