_The Count de St. Julian to the Marquis of Pescara_
_Palermo_
I rejoice with you sincerely upon the pleasures you begin to find in the
city of Naples. May all the days of my Rinaldo be happy, and all his
paths be strewed with flowers! It would have been truly to be lamented,
that melancholy should have preyed upon a person so young and so
distinguished by fortune, or that you should have sighed amidst all the
magnificence of Naples for the uncultivated plainness of Palermo. So
long as I reside here, your absence will constantly make me feel an
uneasy void, but it is my earnest wish that not a particle of that
uneasiness may reach my friend.
Surely, my dear marquis, there are few correspondents so young as
myself, and who address a personage so distinguished as you, that deal
with so much honest simplicity, and devote so large a share of their
communications to the forbidding seriousness of advice. But you have
accepted the first effort of my friendship with generosity and candour,
and you will, I doubt not, continue to behold my sincerity with a
favourable eye.
Shall I venture to say that I am sorry you have commenced so intimate a
connexion with the marquis of San Severino? Even the character of him
with which you have favoured me, represents him to my wary sight as too
agreeable not to be dangerous. But I have heard of him from others, a
much more unpleasing account.
Alas, my friend, under how fair an outside are the most pernicious
principles often concealed! Your honest heart would not suspect, that an
appearance of politeness frequently covers the most rooted selfishness.
The man who is all gentleness and compliance abroad, is often a tyrant
among his domestics. The attendants upon a court put on their faces
as they put on their clothes. And it is only after a very long
acquaintance, after having observed them in their most unguarded hours,
that you can make the smallest discovery of their real characters.
Remember, my dear Rinaldo, the maxim of the incomparable philosopher of
Geneva: "Man is not naturally amiable." If the human character shews
less pleasing and attractive in the obscurity of retreat, and among the
unfinished personages of a college, believe me, the natives of a court
are not a whit more disinterested, or have more of the reality of
friendship. The true difference is, that the one wears a disguise, and
the other appear as they are.
I do not mean however to impute all the faults I have mentioned to the
marquis of San Severino. He is probably in the vulgar sense of the word
good-natured. As you have already expressed it, he knows not how to
refuse the requests, or contradict the present inclinations of those
with whom he is connected. You say rightly that his gallantries are such
as you can by no means approve. He is, if I am not greatly misinformed,
in the utmost degree loose and debauched in his principles. The greater
part of his time is spent in the haunts of intemperance, and under the
roofs of the courtezan. I am afraid indeed he has gone farther than
this, and that he has not scrupled to ruin innocence, and practise all
the arts of seduction.
There is, my dear Rinaldo, a species of careless and youthful vice, that
assumes the appearance of gentleness, and wears the garb of generosity.
It even pretends to the name of virtue. But it casts down all the sacred
barriers of religion. It laughs to scorn that suspicious vigilance, that
trembling sensibility, that is the very characteristic of virtue. It
represents those faults of which a man may be guilty without
malignity, as innocent. And it endeavours to appropriate to itself
all comprehensiveness of view, all true fortitude, and all liberal
generosity.
Believe me, my friend, this is the enemy from which you have most to
fear. It is not barefaced degeneracy that can seduce you. She must
be introduced under a specious name, she must disguise herself like
something that nature taught us to approve, and she must steal away the
heart at unawares.