"How much better it would be to die young," he would exclaim, "than live
to be old and wicked, or to watch over the decay of the warm affections
and enthusiastic feelings of youth; to see the beautiful fade from the
heart, and the worldly and common-place fill up the blighting void! Oh!
Godfrey, Godfrey! how can you enjoy the miserable and sensual pleasures
for which you are forfeiting self-respect and peace of mind for ever!"
"But Godfrey is happier than you, with all your refined feelings and
cultivated tastes," whispered the tempter to his soul.
"It cannot be," returned the youth, as he communed with his own heart.
"The pleasures of sin may blind the mental vision, and blunt the senses,
for a while; but when the terrible truth makes all things plain--and the
reaction comes--and come it assuredly will--and the mind, like a
polluted stream, can no longer flow back to its own bright source, and
renovate its poisoned waters; who shall then say that the madness of the
sensualist can satisfy the heart?"
Thus did these two young men live together: one endeavoring by the aid
of religion, and by studying the wisdom of the past, to exalt and purify
his fallen nature; the other by grovelling in the dust, and mingling
with beings yet more sinful and degraded, rapidly debased his mind to a
more degenerate and fallen state.
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