How will a regular succession in families be kept up? You, my Lord, boast of your descent, both by father's and mother's side; Why will you deprive your children of a distinction in which you glory?
Good children, what a blessing to their parents! But what comfort can the parent have in children born into the world heirs of disgrace, and who, owing their very being to profligate principles, have no family honour to support, no fair example to imitate, but must be warned by their father, when bitter experience! as convinced him of his errors, to avoid the paths in which he has trod?
How delightful the domestic connexion! To bring to the paternal and fraternal dwellings, a sister, a daughter, that shall be received there with tender love; to strengthen your own interest in the world by alliance with some noble and worthy family, who shall rejoice to trust to the Barone della Porretta the darling of their hopes—This would, to a generous heart, like yours, be the source of infinite delights.

But could you now think of introducing to the friends you revere, the unhappy objects of a vagrant affection? Must not my Jeronymo even estrange himself from his home, to conceal from his father, from his mother, from his sister, persons shut out by all the laws of honour from their society? The persons, so shut out, must hate the family to whose interests theirs are so contrary. What sincere union then, what sameness of affection, between Jeronymo and the objects of his passion?
But the present hour dances delightfully away, and my friend will not look beyond it. His gay companions applaud and compliment him on his triumphs. In general, perhaps, he allows,
'that the welfare and order of society ought to be maintained by submission to Divine and human laws; but his single exception for himself can be of no importance.'
Of what, then, is general practice made up? If every one excepts himself, and offends in the instance that best suits his inclination, what a scene of horror will this world become: Affluence and a gay disposition tempt to licencious pleasures; penury and a gloomy one to robbery, revenge, and murder. Not one enormity will be without its plea, if once the boundaries of duty are thrown down. But, even in this universal depravity, would not his crime be much worse, who robbed me of my child from riot and licentiousness, and under a guise of love and trust, than his who despoiled me of my substance, and had necessity to