have
begun to be wrong, is already to have made a great progress.

A CONSTANT habit of amusement relaxes the tone of the mind, and renders
it totally incapable of application, study, or virtue. Dissipation not
only indisposes its votaries to every thing useful and excellent, but
disqualifies them for the enjoyment of pleasure itself. It softens the
soul so much, that the most superficial employment becomes a labour, and
the slightest inconvenience an agony. The luxurious Sybarite must have
lost all sense of real enjoyment, and all relish for true gratification,
before he complained that he could not sleep, because the rose leaves
lay double under him.

LUXURY and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and
silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it
more than the most active and turbulent vices. The mightiest conquerors
have been conquered by these unarmed foes: the flowery setters are
fastened, before they are felt. The blandishments of Circe were more
fatal to the mariners of Ulysses, than the strength of Polypheme, or
the brutality of the Laestrigons. Hercules, after he had cleansed the
Augean stable, and performed all the other labours enjoined him by
Euristheus, found himself a slave to the softnesses of the heart; and
he, who wore a club and a lion's skin in the cause of virtue,
condescended to the most effeminate employments to gratify a criminal
weakness. Hannibal, who vanquished mighty nations, was himself overcome
by the love of pleasure; and he who despised cold, and want, and danger,
and death on the Alps, was conquered and undone by the dissolute
indulgences of Capua.

BEFORE the hero of the most beautiful and virtuous romance that ever was
written, I mean Telemachus, landed on the island of Cyprus, he
unfortunately lost his prudent companion, Mentor, in whom wisdom is so
finely personified. At first he beheld with horror the wanton and
dissolute manners of the voluptuous inhabitants; the ill effects of
their example were not immediate: he did not fall into the commission
of glaring enormities; but his virtue was secretly and imperceptibly
undermined, his heart was softened by their pernicious society; and the
nerve of resolution was slackened: he every day beheld with diminished
indignation the worship which was offered to Venus; the disorders of
luxury and prophaneness became less and less terrible, and the
infectious air of the country enfeebled his courage, a