nconstancy_. In, perhaps, nineteen
cases out of twenty, there is, in the unfortunate cases of illicit
gratification, no seduction at all, the passion, the absence of virtue,
and the crime, being all mutual. But, there are other cases of a very
different description; and where a man goes coolly and deliberately to
work, first to gain and rivet the affections of a young girl, then to
take advantage of those affections to accomplish that which he knows
must be her ruin, and plunge her into misery for life; when a man does
this merely for the sake of a momentary gratification, he must be either
a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of the name of man, or he must
have a heart little inferior, in point of obduracy, to that of the
murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let them be well aware,
that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology can possibly avail
them. Their character is not solely theirs, but belongs, in part, to
their family and kindred. They may, in the case contemplated, be objects
of compassion with the world; but what contrition, what repentance, what
remorse, what that even the tenderest benevolence can suggest, is to
heal the wounded hearts of humbled, disgraced, but still affectionate,
parents, brethren and sisters?

137. As to _constancy_ in Lovers, though I do not approve of the saying,
'At lovers' lies Jove laughs;' yet, when people are young, one object
may supplant another in their affections, not only without criminality
in the party experiencing the change, but without blame; and it is
honest, and even humane, to act upon the change; because it would be
both foolish and cruel to marry one girl while you liked another better:
and the same holds good with regard to the other sex. Even when
_marriage_ has been _promised_, and that, too, in the most solemn
manner, it is better for both parties to break off, than to be coupled
together with the reluctant assent of either; and I have always thought,
that actions for damages, on this score, if brought by the girl, show a
want of delicacy as well as of spirit; and, if brought by the man,
excessive meanness. Some damage may, indeed, have been done to the
complaining party; but no damage equal to what that party would have
sustained from a marriage, to which the other party would have yielded
by a sort of compulsion, producing to almost a certainty what Hogarth,
in his _Marriage a la Mode_, most aptly typifies by two curs, of
different sexes, f