The play-house becomes his favourite amusement, and he is enchanted with the gaiety and splendour of the chief personages.

The disgust which vice gives him at first, soon wears off to make way for new notions, more liberal in his opinion, by which a sovereign contempt of religion, and a declared war upon the chastity of wives, maids and widows, are converted from being infamous vices to be fashionable virtues.

The infection spreads gradually through all ranks and becomes universal.

How gladly would I listen to any one, who should undertake to prove, that what I have been describing is chimerical! But the dissoluteness of our young men of birth will not suffer me to doubt its reality.

Sir Harry Wildair has completed many a rake; and in the suspicious husband, Ranger, the humble imitator of Sir Harry, has had no slight influence in spreading that character.