the beginning, and then sends in her account." The worst of youthful indiscretions is, not that they destroy health, so much as that they sully manhood. The dissipated youth becomes a tainted man; and often he cannot be pure, even if he would. If cure there be, it is only to be found in inoculating the mind with a fervent spirit of duty, and in energetic application to useful work.
One of the most gifted of Frenchmen, in point of great intellectual endowments, was Benjamin Constant; but blasé at twenty, his life was only a prolonged wail, instead of a harvest of the great deeds which he was capable of accomplishing with ordinary diligence and self-control. He resolved upon doing so many things which he never did that people came to speak of him as Constant the Inconstant. He was a fluent and brilliant writer, and cherished the ambition of writing works, "which the world would not willingly let die." But whilst Constant affected the highest thinking, unhappily he practised the lowest living; nor did the transcendentalism of his books atone for the meanness of his life. He frequented the gaming-tables while engaged in preparing his work upon religion, and carried on a disreputable intrigue while writing his 'Adolphe.' With all his powers of intellect, he was powerless, because he had no faith in virtue. "Bah!" said he, "what are honour and dignity? The longer I live, the more clearly I see there is nothing in them." It was the howl of a miserable man. He described himself as but "ashes and dust." "I pass," said he, "like a shadow over the earth, accompanied by misery and ennui." He wished for Voltaire's energy, which he would rather have possessed than his genius,
