of no use trying to be good, and to do his duty,
how would it do to try the other experiment--to fling off the trammels
of duty and principle altogether; to do all those things which
inclination suggested and the moral sense forbade; to enjoy himself; to
declare himself on the side of pleasure and self-indulgence? Certainly
this would save him from much unpleasantness and annoyance in many ways.
He was young, vigorous, active; he might easily make himself more
popular than he was with the boys; and as for the authorities, do what
he would, it appeared that he could hardly be in worse disrepute than
now. Vice bade high: as he thought of it all, his pen flew faster, and
his pulse seemed to send the blood bounding through his veins as he
tightened the grasp of his left-hand round the edge of the desk.

Hitherto the ideal which he had set before him, as the standard to be
attained during his school-life, had been one in which a successful
devotion to duty, and a real effort to attain to "godliness and good
learning," had borne the largest share. But on this morning a very
different ideal rose before him; he would abandon all interest in school
work, and only aim at being a gay, high-spirited boy, living solely for
pleasure, amusement, and self-indulgence. There were many such around
him--heroes among their schoolfellows, popular, applauded, and proud.
Sin seemed to sit lightly and gracefully upon them. Endowed as he was
with every gift of person and appearance, to this condition at least he
felt that he could easily attain. It was an ideal not, alas! unnatural
to the perilous age:

"Which claims for manhood's vice the privilege
Of boyhood--when young Dionysius seems
All joyous as he burst upon the East
A jocund and a welcome conqueror;
And Aphrodite, sweet as from the sea
She rose, and floated in her pearly shell
A laughing girl; when lawless will erects
Honour's gay temple on the Mount of God,
And meek obedience bears the coward's brand;
While Satan in celestial panoply
With Sin, his lady, smiling by his side,
Defies all heaven to arms."

Yes; he would follow the multitude to do all the evil which he saw being
done around him; it looked a joyous and delightful prospect. He gazed
on the bright vision of sin, on the iridescent waters of pleasure; and
did not know that the brightness was a mirage of the burning desert, the
iridescence a film of corruption over a stagnant pool.

The lette