tions of the castle which fancy's eye has builded, (and which
might even be realized); and lest their morning sun, which is now going
forth in splendor, be not shrouded in darkness ere it has yet attained
its meridian height.

Every city affords places and means of amusement, at once rational,
satisfying, and improving. Such are collections of curiosities, natural
and artificial, lectures on science, debating clubs, lyceums, &c. Then
the libraries which abound, afford a source of never ending amusement
and instruction. Let these suffice. At least, 'touch not, handle not'
that which an accumulated and often sorrowful experience has shown to
be accursed.

Neither resort to _solitary_ vice. If this practice should not injure
your system immediately, it will in the end. I am sorry to be obliged
to advert to this subject; but I know there is occasion. Youth,
especially those who lead a confined life, seek occasional excitement.
Such sometimes resort to this lowest,--I may say most destructive of
practices. Such is the constitution of things, as the Author of Nature
has established it, that if every other vicious act were to escape its
merited punishment in this world, the one in question could not.
Whatever its votaries may think, it never fails, in a single instance,
to injure them, personally; and consequently their posterity, should
any succeed them.

It is not indeed true that the foregoing vices do of themselves,
produce all this mischief _directly_; but as Dr. Paley has well said,
_criminal intercourse_ 'corrupts and _depraves the mind_ more than any
single vice whatsoever.' It gradually benumbs the conscience, and leads
on, step by step, to those blacker vices at which the youth would once
have shuddered.

But debasing as this vice is, it is scarcely more so than solitary
gratification. The former is not always at hand; is attended, it may
be, with expense; and with more or less danger of exposure. But the
latter is practicable whenever temptation or rather imagination
solicits, and appears to the morbid eye of sense, to be attended with
no hazard. Alas! what a sad mistake is made here! It is a fact well
established by medical men, that every error on this point is
injurious; and that the constitution is often more surely or more
effectually impaired by causes which do not appear to injure it in the
least, than by occasional and heavier shocks, which rouse it to a
reaction. The one case may be compared to daily _