and
poison, at their very sources, the purest streams of human
felicity,--that it will be necessary to advert briefly but plainly to
some of the most frequent forms of youthful irregularity.

Large cities and thinly settled places are the _extremes_ of social
life. Here, of course, vice will be found in its worst forms. It is
more difficult to say which extreme is worst, among _an equal number of
individuals_; but probably the city; for in the country, vice is
oftener solitary, and less frequently social; while in the city it is
not only _social_ but also _solitary_.

A well informed gentleman from New Orleans, of whose own virtue by the
way, I have not the _highest_ confidence, expressed, lately the
strongest apprehension that the whole race of young men in our cities,
of the present generation, will be ruined. Others have assured me that
in the more northern cities, the prospect is little, if any, more
favorable.

It is to be regretted that legislators have not found out the means of
abolishing those haunts in cities which might be appropriately termed
schools of licentiousness, and thus diminishing an aggregate of
temptation already sufficiently large. But the vices, like their
votaries, go in companies. Until, therefore, the various haunts of
intemperance in eating and drinking, and of gambling and stage-playing,
can be broken up, it may be considered vain to hope for the
disappearance of those sties of pollution which are their almost
inevitable results. We might as well think of drying up the channel of
a mighty river, while the fountains which feed it continue to flow as
usual.

There is now in Pennsylvania,--it seems unnecessary to name the
place--a man thirty-five years old, with all the infirmities of 'three
score and ten.' Yet his premature old age, his bending and tottering
form, wrinkled face, and hoary head, might be traced to solitary and
social _licentiousness_.

This man is not alone. There are thousands in every city who are going
the same road; some with slow and cautious steps, others with a fearful
rapidity. Thousands of youth on whom high expectations have been
placed, are already on the highway that will probably lead down to
disease and premature death.

Could the multitude of once active, sprightly, and promising young men,
whose souls detested open vice, and who, without dreaming of danger,
only found their way occasionally to a lottery office, and still more
rarely to the theatre or t