Page:Glenarvon (Volume 3).djvu/51

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CHAPTER LXXVI.

The repetition of a lover's promises is perhaps as irksome to those who may coldly peruse them, as the remembrance is delightful to those who have known the rapture of receiving them. I cannot, however, think that to describe them is either erroneous or unprofitable. It may indeed be held immoral to exhibit, in glowing language, scenes which ought never to have been at all; but when every day, and every hour of the day—at all times, and in all places, and in all countries alike, man is gaining possession of his victim by similar arts, to paint the portrait to the life, to display his base intentions, and their mournful consequences, is to hold out a warning and admonition to innocence and virtue: