Imagination dances to mufic like this. How delightful to follow fuch obliging direction! Can one doubt the fincerity, or refift the fuggeftions, of fuch difinterefted Friends? Such Difinterefted Friends-Credulous boy! to believe thus implicitly the pretences of those who would lead you aftray from your duty, from your parents, from the path. of Wifdom, which your heart tells you in a fober hour is the only path of peace! You know not that all this while they are practising on your fimplicity, for fome purpose of their own; whether it be plea fure, or gain, or importance, or perhaps the fad confolation of having one companion more in vice and mifery, like that forlorn fpirit who hopes to find some mitigation of his woe in plunging others into the fame loft condition.

The characters I paint, feel at moments that they are loft; and can their attempts to enfnare you be prompted by true regard?

When they have accomplished their ends on an unwary youth, what is more common than to fee them abandon him to wretchednefs and infamy? Trust me, Sir, the fellowship of men without prin→ ciple, as they should be called, of men of honour, men of fpirit, men of the world, as they call themselves, ought to bé fhunned like the peftilence. Even when they do not wish to taint you with the laft degree of wickednefs, their intimacy is ftill deftructive. If you ask, How? I will tell you. It infenfibly relaxes the nerves of refolution, warps the ingenuity of Nature, contaminates the fancy, enflames the paffions, pollutes the whole current of life in its fource, by infilling difaffection to religion, undutifulnefs to parents, averfion to authority, a difregard for the fabbath, a disbelief of the fcripture, an irreverence for the name of God, a contempt of order and decency, a neglect of reputation among the virtuous and the grave, a rooted diflike to ferious

conversation, to ferious men, to ferious objects of every kind.

I fay not that thefe effects are produced. all at once, or that, by conforting with the giddy and the profligate, you will certainly proceed quite fo far. But all experience confirms the general remark of the Heathen Poet, quoted by a Chriftian Apoftle, that "evil communication cor

rupts good manners.” It is fure to operate on the foul, as poifon operates on the body, with more or lefs malignity as its compofition is more or lefs fubtile and potent. The perfon lives not at any age, leaft of all at that when the mind is known to be moft fufceptible, who can avoid taking a tincture from those with whom he mingles, not, as we hinted before, tranfiently and through neceffity, but habitually and from choice.

"He

that walketh with wife men fhall be "wife; but a companion of fools shall "be destroyed," faid the deepeft obferver

of life that ever existed among the fons of Adam. With what unequalled emphafis has he cautioned young men against the first approaches to familiarity with the bad! I fay, the First Approaches, well knowing with what refiftlefs and increafing rapidity thofe are drawn in, who venture but to touch on that dreadful whirlpool. Would to God his words were engraved on your hearts, in characters which no time and no temptation fhould have power to efface!. "Enter not into the "path of the wicked; and go not in the "way of evil men. Avoid it: pafs by it: "turn away from it, and pass away". where the feveral ideas rife above each other with a beautiful gradation, and form all together one of the most pointed and awakening admonitions that could fall from the pen of Wisdom. No; there is not in all her school a leffon of more importance, than that of fhunning even the remoteft tendencies to unneceffary affociation, or what is commonly termed Friend

fhip, with unprincipled men; in which number we do not comprehend only the debauched, the openly impious, or the fcandalously prophane; but the diffipated too; yes, the Diffipated in the leaft criminal acceptation of that word, or those who, on a competition between duty and amusement, are accustomed to prefer the Jaft; tranfgreffing, or forgetting, or fuperficially performing,, the firft, for the fake of enjoying more freely their light and airy pleasures.

I am not ignorant, that, when preachers and others inveigh against the trifling turn of the times, they muft lay their account with being confidered by many as rigid cenfors, or at beft as mere declaimers. Provided no enormity is committed, provided the general rules of decorum are obferved, Where, it has been frequently afked, is the evil of a gay life? I will answer the queftion, by asking another: Is there no evil-remember, Sir, I