theirs, the greater part of children attain the age of manhood and
womanhood without having reaped the precious advantages offered them
by the first stage of life, when the soul is most susceptible of
receiving the impress of grace and virtue. A vitiated or inadequate
primitive education, bad example, pernicious instruction? perchance,
or at least personal levity of character, combined with that of
childhood, deprive this age of many advantages, and call for a total
reparation of the past, at a period of life that should be the living
figure of hope.

Happy, indeed, are those who have only the levity and negligences of
childhood to repair, and who have never felt the crushing weight of a
humiliating and grievous fault! Alas! that purity, that innocence so
common formerly among children, is every day disappearing from their
midst, many among them have become the victims of sin ere the
passions of the heart manifested their presence; and their hearts
have quivered from the sting of remorse ere they felt the perfidious
lurings of pleasure. Many have received from sin that doleful
experience, that premature craftiness, which, far from enlightening
the mind, obscures and blinds it,--which, far from fortifying the
will, enfeebles and enervates it.

Such is the light by which we can truly see the importance that
should be attached to the time of youth. At this period of life sin
has not yet taken deep root in the heart,--it has not at least
assumed the frightful magnitude of one of those inveterate habits,
justly called habits of second nature, which invade and pollute the
sacred sanctuary of both body and soul, forming in the earliest
instincts, inclinations and desires so violent, so obstinate, that
superhuman efforts with a life-long struggle are the consequences