Insidious foes lurk around your path. A dangerous enemy lies in ambush. Avoid a vicious companion, as you would avoid the fascination and the fang of a serpent. His eye may attract, and his movements may seem graceful; but his intentions are deadly, and his venom fatal. "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed."

TEMPTATIONS OF A CITY LIFE.

IT cannot be denied that a residence in one of our cities is attended with more danger to a youth of inexperience, than where the population is more sparse, and the temptations proportionably fewer. The seducer does not work without his appropriate tools, nor hope to compass his end without the aid of intermediate agents.

The theatre, appealing to that curiosity and fondness for excitement which strongly characterize the young, throws upon his eye, at every post and corner of the streets, the announcement of some splendid tragedy, or some popular performer. The comparative respectability of this amusement is plausibly urged, and the pittance for which it can be enjoyed is so trifling, that, in the opinion of the tempter, it would be a disgrace never to have enjoyed the gratifications of the drama. Whilst respectable names are brought forward as the warrant for an innocent attendance on this species of amusement, the deadly concomitants are cautiously kept out of view. It is not suggested that licen tiousness appropriates to herself a large part of the ground, and rallies there her sons and daughters,

who throw out their lures for the innocent and the unsuspecting. It is not mentioned that a sublime tragedy is generally followed by an obscene afterpiece, graduated to the taste, and co-operating with the intentions of that licentious crew. The unwary youth is not informed how many appendages of ruin are hung around the vestibule of this polluted temple, nor how easy is the transition from the court of Thespis to the revels of Bacchus, and the haunts of his dissolute train.

It will not do to talk of inculcating virtue from the stage, when even decency is often made to blush, and when some of the most acceptable pieces are fraught with immorality. Instead of being a "school of virtue," it is a school of vice, a hot-bed of iniquity, a pander to pollution and death. This is not idle declamation against a popular amusement. We speak a sentiment, to the truth of which the consciences, if not the lives, of theatre-going men, will bear us witness. Many a youth has found, by lamentable experience, that, in passing the threshold of a theatre, he bade adieu for ever to hope, reputation, and happiness.

The auxiliary, next in influence, which comes to aid the tempter in his malignant projects, is the gaming-table. This is an appendage to those houses of refreshment, whose ostensible object is to afford an occasional meal, and offer to the social club the means of social enjoyment. But it is scarcely necessary to enter these depraved dwellings, to understand that this is not their only object. Even in passing, you may hear the jarring strife, the intimidating threat, and the eager and malicious note of triumph, mingled with rattling balls, and the bedlam roar of merriment. The sickly light that twinkles, evening after evening,

over the porch of this saturnalian abode, conducts the unwary feet first to the revel, and then to the gaming-table.

The gambling room is generally thrown in the back-ground, and sometimes shut out even from the light of day: thus indicating that designs so base, require, for their perpetration, appropriate darkness. There, in that artificial night, and around that fatal table, dwell the maddened sons of strife, practised in the arts of deception, and copartners in the stakes which their adroitness enables them to seize. There, they hover like so many vultures, circling and scanning their prey, until an opportunity enables them to swoop upon it, with the certainty of its destruction. From these men, all soul, all sympathy, is gone. They have an eye that measures the possessions of their victim, and a hand that can feel its way, unobserved, to the last cent in the pocket. Many of our young men are drawn into these scenes, and, after becoming once initiated, become permanent occupants of the cardtable or the billiard-room.

There is still another dark porch which leads to certain ruin; and he, whose feet cross its threshold, will discover the truth of the inspired declaration, "Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death." We would willingly pass over this unwelcome subject: we would gladly indulge the hope, that no young man, who shall have had decision enough to peruse these desultory remarks, up to this point, possesses the hardihood which is requisite to the indulgence of so base and destructive a crime. We would gladly presume, that it is necessary only to allude to it, to fill the soul of my youthful reader with horror. But alas! how many have gone to this fatal ground! How

many have found themselves bound by a fascination which nothing could break! How many have felt an invisible influence chaining them to a spot, where they have sacrificed every hope for this world, and for that which is to come! Poor, infatuated, ruined youth! You have nothing left but unceasing remorse, and nothing in reserve but irretrievable misery.

We cannot but hope that the pictures we have drawn of the dangers to which young men are exposed, may serve to deter those from vice who are comparatively moral. To recover those whose habits of vicious indulgence are confirmed, is beyond our expectations. The intemperate are seldom reclaimed. It has generally been found a hopeless effort to attempt to bring back the drunkard to the respectability he has forfeited. As much as it may wring the heart of benevolence, we are obliged to leave him to his destiny. All that we can do for him is to commend him to the mercy of God. So also is it with the confirmed profligate. Passion has so long domineered over reason and conscience, that hope, in his case, borders on despair. We cannot convince him, for his mind is brutalized. We cannot alarm him, for he acknowledges that even hell itself has less misery than is contained in his own bosom. We cannot rouse his sensibilities, for they have been drowned in the frequent and infamous debauch. He is an unhappy, devoted sensualist, over whom affectionate kindred must weep; and in whose behalf a virtuous community can do little more than pray.

But our hope is, to hold up to the minds of all who have been mercifully preserved from these extremes of wickedness, the danger to which they are exposed. We would take our stand between vou

youthful reader, and these scenes of horror and wretchedness and by all that is sacred in religion, and desirable in "the life that now is," warn you to avoid them. We would post a sentinel at every passage of death, to cry in your ears, Beware, beware! we would throw in the pathway to these haunts of pollution, every obstacle to impede your course; and hang upon their door-posts the skeleton vestiges of those who have died within their precincts. We would invoke the ghosts of those unhappy wretches who have gone, to come back and hover around the scenes of their profligacy, to admonish you not to be allured to the same degradation and ruin. We would, were it possible, give them a voice that should curdle your blood, and dismay your soul, and save you from the anguish and the misery which they have gone to inherit.

ON THE PLEASURES OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

IN the savage man the intellectual faculties sleep. As soon as his appetites are satisfied, he sees neither pleasures to desire, nor pains to fear. He lies down and sleeps again. This negative happiness would bring desolation to the heart of a civilized man. All his faculties have commenced their development. He experiences a new craving, which occupations, grave or futile, but rapidly changed and renewed, can alone appease. If there occur between them intervals which can be filled neither by remembrances, nor by necessary repose, lassitude and ennui intervene, and measure for him the length of these chasms in life by sadness.

The next enemy to happiness, after vice, is ennui.