Notwithstanding his remorse and apparent repentance, which there is every reason to believe were sincere at the time, poor unhappy F. had not resolution to relinquish his licentious mode of life; not, he said, that it afforded him any pleasure, but because the presence of virtue confused, and in his own imagination reproached him. The remembrance of earlier days, when his growing accomplishments not only put forth the tender buds of hope, but exhibited fair flowers approaching fast to perfection—the joy of his family, and the admiration of his friends—now withered and decayed, his heart became callous, and he ingloriously yielded to the empire of sin and the slavery of passion without a struggle. Brooding over a thousand evils real and imaginary, his mind assumed the darkest gloom, and gradually sunk into savage melancholy. Accompanied by his mother, the “angelic E.,” as he used to call that young lady, visited him often, for he had requested her to consider herself his betrothed wife. They tried various methods to engage his mind in some useful or even amusing pursuit, but he could endure nothing that did not present novelty at every instant. The visits of the ladies at length became irksome to him; and determining to rid himself of their importunity, he one morning bade them carelessly farewell, and set out for London. Here he found that some of his old associates had been obliged, from different causes, to decamp; but some he still found hovering round those infamous sinks of lust and misery to which men of pleasure resort to kill time and escape from themselves: to those pests of society, and those haunts of dissipation, he now attached himself. The shock he had sustained by his father’s death had greatly impaired his health, and the mode of life he now absurdly made choice of was rapidly destroying his constitution. After several months passed in the senseless bustle, and deeply engaged in the _important nothings_ which occupy so much of a rake’s time, he applied to me with a mind and body both wofully diseased. I must here beg to obtrude myself, not through any motive of personal vanity, but an anxious desire faithfully to depict the errors that caused the ruin of my once excellent and happy friend. Knowing the expectations he had raised, and the engagements he was under to the lady whom his uncle had recommended, I inquired whether he had made any definitive arrangements: to this he replied, “My engagements with her and every other woman will last while I can feel myself happy in their society, and not an hour longer.” He freely acknowledged, that his mind was made up never to marry, but that he neither could nor would relinquish E. I expostulated with him seriously on the enormity of seducing any virtuous woman; but any injury done to E. would in my opinion be the most heinous crime he could commit, and one which, I was convinced, God would never pardon.