If sometimes their beginning infirmities give them strong and salutary advice, if the danger terrifies them for some moments, their rage of debauchery replunges them again, so that it may well be said of them, _Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta._ PERS. In the mean while the danger is actual, the destruction so imminent, that short indeed is the time of opportunity for amendment. ——_cinis et manes et fabula fies:_ _Vive memor lethi: fugit hora: hoc quod loquor inde est._ PERS. While I studied in Geneva, a time, of which the remembrance will be dear to me for the rest of my life, one of my condisciples was come to that state of horror, that he was not master enough of himself to abstain from these abominations, even during the time of the lessons. He did not wait long for his punishment: and perished miserably of a consumption, in about two years time. A similar case to this may be found in the _Onania_.[88] The ingenious author, who, from the Latin edition of this work, furnished the extract in the excellent Latin Journal of Literature, which, about a twelvemonth, made its first appearance at Berne, tells you, with regard to this observation, that a whole college had recourse to this filthy practice, by way of an amusement, to avoid falling asleep, at the lessons of scholastic metaphysics, which a very old professor used to teach them, as he nodded between sleeping and waking[89]. But this little story seems to me less fit to prove what I have been physically advancing, than the actual horrid dissoluteness into which the contagion of example may plunge a number of young people. The same author has recently published a work, which I have not as yet had the advantage of perusing, but to which an excellent judge assigns a rank among the best productions of this age. There he mentions, that, in a certain town, there was some years ago discovered a whole society of wicked boys, from fourteen to fifteen years old, who met to practise this vice, and that a whole school was to this moment infected with it.[90] The health of a young Prince was daily declining, without any one’s being able to discover the cause of it. At length his surgeon suspected it, watched him, and surprized him in the fact. He confessed, that one of his _valets de chambre_ had taught him the practice, and that he had been often guilty of it. The habit was so strong upon him, that the most pressing considerations, and the most strenuously inforced, could not break him of it. The evil was constantly gaining ground; his strength was daily wasting; and there was no such thing as saving him, but by keeping guard over him, so as not to let him be a moment out of sight, for above eight months. A patient, in one of his letters, gave me a lively description of the difficulties of his victory.