First, then, I would affirm that the character of the seducer is cowardly, dishonourable, and base; and I defy the united sophistry of the whole fraternity to refute the assertion. Is it not cowardly, I would ask the most brazen of these unblushing champions, to invade the retreats of innocence and peace, and, after trampling down virtue, change them as it were into the abodes of infernal spirits, because the inhabitants are poor and unprotected, and consequently without any means of punishing the violator of their happiness? What prevents them from at least attempting their ungenerous designs on families of rank, but the _fear_ that a father or brother would wash away the insult with the heart’s blood of the foul assailant? Or is it that the tinsel logic they were taught in the school of “_honour_,” succeeds better in blindfolding the understanding, weakening the faith, and warping the principles of the unenlightened mind, that they thus prefer to attack poverty and weakness, and to lay in ruins that sole refuge of the poor girl—purity and virtue? What a dignified employment for “a man of the world”—“a man of honour”—the last, graceless hope, perhaps, of some ancient, noble, and _truly honourable_ family! I think the world are pretty well agreed in their abhorrence of a swindler, though his arts are surely not half so infamous as those of the seducer; and the effects of the one, as they are felt in Society, dwindle into insignificance when compared with the overpowering misery produced by the conduct and practices of the other. The swindler at most only deprives us of our money, which perhaps his own wants, or those of a starving family, may urge, and for which at some future opportunity, as instances have occurred, he may be able to make some reparation. But the seducer places his victim out of the pale of earthly happiness, and, it is feared, in this consigns her to eternal ruin. What excuse can he plead? One of two only. Either, envious of her happiness, he wantonly destroyed it, or esteemed the short-lived gratification of his own brutal lusts equivalent to the endless torture which he could not but have so much reason as to believe would thus be visited on her. An elegant writer likens the hearts of these men to a stagnant and putrifying lake, which sends forth its poisonous exhalations to corrupt and wither every plant that grows on its banks.