discovered us, and procured witnesses of our caresses. He then
prosecuted me at law, and recovered L3000 damages, which much distressed
my fortune to pay; and, what was worse, his wife, being divorced, came
upon my hands. I led a very uneasy life with her; for, besides that my
passion was now much abated, her excessive jealousy was very
troublesome. At length death rid me of an inconvenience which the
consideration of my having been the author of her misfortunes would
never suffer me to take any other method of discarding.

I now bad adieu to love, and resolved to pursue other less dangerous and
expensive pleasures. I fell into the acquaintance of a set of jolly
companions, who slept all day and drank all night; fellows who might
rather be said to consume time than to live. Their best conversation was
nothing but noise: singing, hollowing, wrangling, drinking, toasting,
sp--wing, smoaking were the chief ingredients of our entertainment. And
yet, bad as these were, they were more tolerable than our graver scenes,
which were either excessive tedious narratives of dull common matters of
fact, or hot disputes about trifling matters, which commonly ended in a
wager. This way of life the first serious reflection put a period to;
and I became member of a club frequented by young men of great
abilities. The bottle was now only called in to the assistance of our
conversation, which rolled on the deepest points of philosophy. These
gentlemen were engaged in a search after truth, in the pursuit of which
they threw aside all the prejudices of education, and governed
themselves only by the infallible guide of human reason. This great
guide, after having shown them the falsehood of that very ancient but
simple tenet, that there is such a being as a Deity in the universe,
helped them to establish in his stead a certain rule of right, by
adhering to which they all arrived at the utmost purity of morals.
Reflection made me as much delighted with this society as it had taught