ABSTRACT
Vaurien had become the friend of Lady Belfield; and this word, even in the dictionary of fashionable language, has not degenerated into a nonentity; but the adroitness of vice, knows to disguise it’s impurities, by adorning them with the holy titles that are sacred to virtue; it is thus that it’s grossness is concealed, it’s deformity invites, and it’s horrors are crowned with delights that are not it’s own. We think, at first, that we enjoy love, when we grasp at lust; that we are soothed by friendship, when we listen to sycophancy; and that we pursue amusement / when we are heavily dragged through dissipation. To the clear eye of reason, the pleasures of vice pay an involuntary tribute of honour to virtue, by assuming it’s name; and it is at least a consolation to some, and a conviction to many, that vice would lose half of its seduction, did it not at first appear in the disguise of some virtue.
