11.  He spent the evening, as is usual in the rudiments of vice, with perturbation and imperfect enjoyment, and met his disappointed friends in the morning with confusion and excuses.  His companions, not accustomed to such scrupulous anxiety, laughed at his uneasiness, compounded the offence for a bottle, gave him courage to break his word again, and again levied the penalty.

12.  He ventured the same experiment upon another society; and found them equally ready to consider it as a venial fault, always incident to a man of quickness and gaiety; till by degrees he began to think himself at liberty to follow the last invitation, and was no longer shocked at the turpitude of falsehood.  He made no difficulty to promise his presence at distant places, and if listlessness happened to creep upon him, would sit at home with great tranquillity, and has often, while he sunk to sleep in a chair, held ten tables in continual expectation of his entrance.

13.  He found it so pleasant to live in perpetual vacancy, that he soon dismissed his attention as an useless incumbrance, and resigned himself to carelessness and dissipation, without any regard to the future or the past, or any other motive of action than the impulse of a sudden desire, or the attraction of immediate pleasure.  The absent were immediately forgotten, and the hopes or fears of others had no influence upon his conduct.  He was in speculation completely just, but never kept his promise to a creditor; he was benevolent, but always deceived those friends whom he undertook to patronize or assist; he was prudent, but suffered his affairs to be embarrassed for want of settling his accounts at stated times.

14.  He courted a young lady, and when the settlements were drawn, took a ramble into the country on the day appointed to sign them.  He resolved to travel, and sent his chests on ship-board, but delayed to follow them till he lost his passage.  He was summoned as an evidence in a cause of great importance, and loitered in the way till the trial was past.  It is said, that when he had with great expense formed an interest in a borough, his opponent contrived by some agents, who knew his temper, to lure him away on the day of election.

15.  His benevolence draws him into the commission of thousand crimes, which others, less kind or civil, would escape.  His courtesy invites application, his promises produce dependence:  he has his pockets filled with petitions, which he intends some time to deliver and enforce; and his table covered with letters of request, with which he purposes to comply; but time slips imperceptibly away, while he is either idle or busy:  his friends lose their opportunities, and charge upon him their miscarriages and calamities.

This character, however contemptible, is not peculiar to Aliger.

16.  They whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as to make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those that persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what they have promised.