Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/148

 actual sight of brutal ebriety was supposed to have inspired youth with the virtue of temperance; on the same principle, that the Platonist, in the study of deformity, conceived the beautiful. Let me warn you not to fall into the usual error of youth, in fancying that the circle you move in is precisely the world itself. Do not imagine that there are not other beings, whose benevolent principle is governed by finer sympathies; by more generous passions; and by those nobler emotions, which really constitute all our public and private virtues. I give you this hint, lest, in your present society, you might suppose these virtues were merely historical.

"Once more, I must beseech you, not to give loose to any elation of mind. The machinery by which you have attained this unnatural result, must be so complicated, that in the very tenth hour, you will find yourself stopped in some part where you never counted on an im-