Alexandria Gazette & Advertiser

MISCELLANEOUS.

False Pleasure contrasted with Virtue.

The sentiments of men concerning virtue, and their own particular practice of it, form a very strange and striking contrast.
Notwithstanding their own irregular or imperfect conduct, a general feeling with regard to morality, pervades the human species.
There is no part of his nature in which man is so earnest to excel, and so jealous of a defect, as his understanding. Men will give up a by part of their frame sooner than this; they will subscribe to many infirmities and errors; they will confess a want of temper, and the proper government of their passions; they will even admit deviations with regard to the lesser moralities; but never yield the smallest iota in what respects their intellectual abilities.
The early period of life is frequently a season of delusion. When youth scatters its blandishments, and the song of pleasure is heard, let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered, and let no flower of the spring pass away: the inexperienced and the unwary listen to the sound, and surrender themselves to the enchantment. Not satisfied with those just and masculine joys, which nature offers, and virtue consecrates, they rush into the excesses of unlawful pleasure; not satisfied with those fruits bordering the path of virtue, which they may taste and live, they put forth their hand to the forbidden tree. One criminal indulgence lays the foundation for another, till sinful pleasure becomes a pursuit that employs all the faculties, and absorbs all the time of its votaries. There is no moderation nor government in vice. Desires that are innocent, may be indulged with innocence; pleasures that are pure, may be pursued with purity; and the round of guiltless delights may be made without encroaching on the great duties of life.
But guilty pleasures become the masters and the tyrants of the mind: when these lords acquire dominion, they bring all the thoughts into captivity, and rule with unlimited and despotic sway.
When we look around us to consider the fate of our equals in age, who have been swept away, not by the hand of time, but by the scythe of intemperance, and involved in the shade of death. Contemplate that crowd, which rests in the invisible world, where their mansion is fixed forever. When the sons of the siren call us to the banquet of vice, let us stop in the midst of this career, pause on the brink, look down, and while yet one throb belongs to virtue, turn back from the verge of destruction: think of that ruin that false pleasure introduces into human nature.--Behold a rational being arrested in his course; a character that might have shone in public and in private life, cast into the shades of oblivion; a name that might have been uttered with a tear, and left as an inheritance to a race to come, consigned to the roll of infamy; all that is great in human nature sacrificed at the shrine of sensual pleasure in this world; and the candidate for immortality in the next, plunged into the irremediable gulf of folly, dissipation, and endless misery.
AMANTHIS.