But let us continue our narrative, and beg the reader's indulgence
for having thus transgressed.
Flattered and caressed among gay assemblages, Lorenzo soon found
himself drawn beyond their social pleasantries into deeper and more
alluring excitements. His frequent visits at the saloon and
gambling-tables did not detract, for a time, from the social
position society had conferred upon him.
His parents, instead of restraining, fostered these associations,
prided themselves on his reception, providing means of maintaining
him in this style of living. Vanity and passion led him captive in
their gratifications; they were inseparable from the whirlpool of
confused society that triumphs at the south,--that leads the proud
heart writhing in the agony of its follies. He cast himself upon
this, like a frail thing upon a rapid stream, and--forgetting the
voyage was short--found his pleasures soon ended in the troubled
waters of misery and disgrace.
There is no fundamental morality in the south, nor is education
invested with the material qualities of social good; in this it
differs from the north, against which it is fast building up a
political and social organisation totally at variance. Instead of
maintaining those great principles upon which the true foundation of
the republic stands, the south allows itself to run into a hyper-
aristocratic vagueness, coupled with an arbitrary determination to
perpetuate its follies for the guidance of the whole Union.
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