its consequences, when set loose from these restraints? Would you know? Imagine then a young man of ingenuous feelings and promising talents, just entering one of our public seminaries. His parents, with strong solicitude, but still stronger hope, place him in a situation, where so much must be trusted to his own discretion and virtue. His heart however is full of good resolves and animating expectations. For a time he succeeds well, and promises much. But he is assailed by the temptations of the profligate; his imagination is polluted, and his desires inflamed; conscience, and his early impressions, struggle against temptation; and had the thought of his parents come over his mind, he might have been saved. But the promptings of passion and the solicitations of the seducer prevail. He visits the haunts of debauchery; but still he does not intend that his health shall be impaired, his studies neglected, or his prospects obscured. He is resolved to be discreet, secret and moderate. But indulgence does but inflame his desires; his fancy is crowded with licentious images; his thoughts perpetually wander to scenes of illicit pleasure. All moderate enjoyments lose their relish; his studies become irksome; the rewards of intellectual exertion no longer excite him. At first his heart could not

but recoil with strong loathings of disgust from the degraded instruments of his gratification. But it is the peculiar nature of this, more than of any other vice, to spread its pollution over the whole character. By degrees his moral sensibility is destroyed; and he is no longer offended by obscene jests and vulgar profaneness, even from a woman's lips. Thus are wasted in the alternations of riot and depression, those hours and opportunities which might have made him the ornament and support of society. He goes forth into the world; perhaps he may now reform; if he does, with what bitter compunction will he look back on the past; but it is more probable that he will not. The force of habit and an incapacity for sober enjoyments are now added to the temptations that first led him astray. His constitution is gradually undermined; paleness spreads over his cheek; he becomes the prey of feebleness and disease; and the scene is closed by the dreadful alternative of early death, or the lingering infirmities of a premature old age, unsoothed by the consciousness of respectability or the voice of real affection.

It is by these dreadful evils, that the Almighty has clearly expressed his displeasure at the abuse of those appetites, which he intended for the wisest and kindest purposes. The picture is not overcharg

ed. I have said that sensuality destroys the capacity for intellectual exertion, and the relish for tranquil and refined enjoyments; and when have you known the votary of licentious pleasures, who could bend down his mind to resolute study, or find satisfaction in literary pursuits, or rational conversation? Or, is it possible that he who is familiar with the most degraded of his species, and whose only intercourse with the sex is that of appetite, can have any taste for purity, and modesty, and moral beauty? Has he any thing left in his heart, which can delight in the interchange of sentiment, and the endearments of affection? I have said that sensuality enfeebles the body, and brings on disease and death. And has not your observation constantly taught you, that the haggard countenance, and the emaciated and tottering frame, sooner or later, mark its victim?

[I have not been able to arrange any portion of the notes, relating to the Desires, in a proper form for publication.]

AFFECTIONS.

AN affection is a mental exercise, known only by experience; yet it may be so described as that those, who know it from this source, may distinguish it from others, which are common to their

nature.

Affections, then, are excitements of mind, which have sentient beings, more commonly persons, for their objects. They are, therefore, distinct from mere complacency or displacency, which may exist toward inanimate things, and from desires, which have things, not persons, for their objects. In desires also, the cause and the object are generally identified; in the affections, with the exception, perhaps, of general benevolence, their cause and their object are different.

The affections have been generally divided into benevolent and malevolent; because, considered as active principles, they have a general tendency to communicate pleasure or pain to their object. Yet there are states of affection which do not necessa

rily imply a disposition to produce good or evil to the object; or, at least, can easily be conceived of as distinct from it. All the affections, however, are either agreeable or disagreeable to their subject. The agreeable seem to me to be, esteem, love, and benevolence, in different degrees, and variously compounded; the disagreeable, disesteem, hatred, and malevolence.

Esteem is founded on the moral qualities of the object considered in himself. When these qualities have in them somewhat more elevated, esteem becomes respect; when they are uncommon and truly great, admiration or veneration. The opposites of these are disesteem, disrespect, and contempt.

Love is that to which the name of affection is more peculiarly appropriated in the common use of language. It is founded on the amiable qualities of the object, real or apparent, and more generally implies some particular relation of that object to ourselves. We often call it, attachment. It is that intimate feeling, which binds us together in the closer ties of sympathy and communion. The opposites of love are dislike, aversion, hatred.

Benevolence is a disposition to communicate good to the object; and malevolence, evil.