ABSTRACT
Vice always appears to be most alluring when its machinations are crowned with success. During the dangerous period of youth, while the passions are warm, the imagination lively, and the judgment weak, the spectator feels a bias in favour of that adventurer whose course (marked by ingenuity) leads to a speedy attainment of his desires. But could Inexperience reflect, and Impetuosity pause, the couch of even the most prosperous villain would present no alluring spectacle. Fitzosborne’s plans had hitherto answered his wishes. His specious / manners had acquired the esteem of the countess, and the unbounded confidence of her lord. He had obtained a firm footing in the family; had sown the baleful germ of suspicion, so fatal to domestic peace; and the displeasure and gloom which occasionally pervaded lord Monteith’s countenance convinced him that it had taken root. Calumny was prepared to doubt the stability of Geraldine’s honour; and Calumny, like a pestilential blast, can taint the innocence it assails. To these engines of seduction might be added the sophistical principles of false philosophy, which, though cautiously administered and often rejected, still, like the delved mine, possess a power capable of subverting the firmest moral virtue, if not founded on the rock of religion.
