hourly tale! But man's life itself is a brief epitome of that which is
infinite and everlasting; and his most accurate confessions are a
miserable abridgment of a hurried and confused compendium!

It was about three months, or more, from the night in which Alice wept
herself to sleep amongst those wild companions, when she contrived to
escape from her father's vigilant eye. They were then on the coast of
Ireland. Darvil had separated himself from Walters--from his seafaring
companions: he had run through the greater part of the money his crimes
had got together; he began seriously to attempt putting into execution
his horrible design of depending for support upon the sale of his
daughter. Now Alice might have been moulded into sinful purposes before
she knew Maltravers; but from that hour her very error made her
virtuous--she had comprehended, the moment she loved, what was meant by
female honour; and by a sudden revelation, she had purchased modesty,
delicacy of thought and soul, in the sacrifice of herself. Much of our
morality (prudent and right upon system) with respect to the first false
step of women, leads us, as we all know, into barbarous errors as to
individual exceptions. Where, from pure and confiding love, that first
false step has been taken, many a woman has been saved in after life
from a thousand temptations. The poor unfortunates who crowd our
streets and theatres have rarely, in the first instances, been corrupted
by love; but by poverty, and the contagion of circumstance and example.
It is a miserable cant phrase to call them the victims of seduction;
they have been the victims of hunger, of vanity, of curiosity, of evil
/female/ counsels; but the seduction of love hardly ever conducts to a
/life/ of vice. If a woman has once really loved, the beloved object
makes an impenetrable barrier between her and other men; their advances
terrify and revolt--she would rather die than be unfaithful even to a
memory. Though man love the sex, woman loves only the individual; and