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ITS POWER ON HUMANITY.

Love, pure love, true love, what can we say of it? The dream of youth; the cherished reminiscence of age; celebrated in the songs of poets; that which impels the warrior to his most daring deeds; which the inspired prophet chooses to typify the holiest sentiments,—what new thing is it possible to say about this theme?

Think for a moment on the history or the literature of the world. Ask the naturalist to reveal the mysteries of life; let the mythologist explain the origin and meaning of all unrevealed religions; look within at the promptings of your own spirit, and this whole life of ours will appear to you as one grand epithalamium.

The profoundest of English poets has said—

That life which is devoid of love is incomplete, sterile, unsatisfactory. It fails of its chiefest end. Nature, in anger, blots it out sooner, and it passes like the shadow of a cloud, leaving no trace behind. Admirable as it may be in other respects, to the eye of the statesman, the physician, the lover of his species, it remains but a fragment, a torso.

Love is one thing to a woman, another to a man. To him, said Madame de StaËl, it is an episode; to her, it is the whole history of life. A thousand distractions divert man. Fame, riches, power, pleasure, all struggle in his bosom to displace the sentiment of love. They are its rivals, not rarely its masters. But woman knows no such distractions. One passion only sits enthroned in her bosom; one only idol is enshrined in her heart, knowing no rival, no successor. This passion is love! This idol is its object.

This is not fancy, not rhetoric; it is the language of cold and exact science, pronounced from the chair of history, from the bureau of the statistician, from the dissecting table of the anatomist. We shall gather up their well-weighed words, and present them, not as fancy sketches, but as facts.

This deep, all-absorbing, single, wondrous love of woman, is something that man cannot understand. This sea of unfathomed depth is to him a mystery. The shallow mind sees of it nothing but the rippling waves, the unstable foam-crests dashing hither and thither, the playful ripples of the surface, and, blind to the still and measureless waters beneath, calls woman capricious, uncertain,—varium et mutabile. But the thinker and seer, undeceived by such externals, knows that beneath this seeming change is stability unequaled in the stronger sex, a power of will to which man is a stranger, a devotion and purpose which strike him with undefined awe.

Therefore, in the myths and legends which the early races framed to express their notions of divine things,—the Fates, who spin and snip the thread of life; the Norns, who

are always females. The seeresses and interpreters of oracles—those who, like the witch of Endor, could summon from the grave the shades of the departed—were women.

Therefore, also, modern infidelity, going back, as it ever does, to the ignorance of the past, and holding it up as something new, makes woman the only deity. Comte and his disciples, having reasoned away all gods, angels, and spirits, and unable to still the craving for something to adore, agree to meet once a week to worship—woman. The French revolutionists, having shut up the churches and abolished God by a decree of the Convention, set up in His stead—a woman.

We could never exhaust this phase of world-history. Everywhere we see the unexpected hand of Love moulding, fashioning all things. The fortunes of the individual, the fate of nations, the destinies of races, are guided by this invisible thread. Let us push our inquiries as to the nature of this all-powerful agent.

WHAT IS LOVE?

It has a divided nature. As we have an immortal soul, but a body of clay; as the plant roots itself in decaying earth, but spreads its flowers in glorious sunlight,—so love has a physiological and a moral nature. It is rooted in that unconscious law of life which bids us perpetuate our kind; which guards over the conservation of life; which enforces, with ceaseless admonition, that first precept which God gave to man before the gates of Eden had been closed upon him: 'Be thou fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.' Nothing but a spurious delicacy, or an ignorance of facts, can prevent our full recognition that love looks to marriage, and marriage to offspring, as a natural sequence.

Do we ask proofs of this? We have them in abundance. Those unfortunate beings who are chosen by Oriental custom to guard the seraglios undergo a mutilation which disqualifies them from becoming parents. Soon all traces of passion, all regard for the other sex, all sentiments of love, totally disappear. The records of medicine contain not a few cases where disease had rendered it necessary to remove the ovaries from women. At once a change took place in voice, appearance, and mind. They spoke like men, a slender beard commenced on their faces, a masculine manner was conspicuous in all their motions, and every thought of sexual love passed away for ever. These are the results in every case. What do they signify? Undoubtedly that the passion of love is dependent upon the capacity of having offspring, and that such was the intention of Nature in implanting in our bosom this all-powerful sentiment.

But this is not all. Nature, as beneficent to those who obey her precepts as she is merciless to those who disregard them, has added to this sentiment of love a physical pleasure in its gratification,—an honourable and proper pleasure, which none but the hypocrite or the ascetic will affect to condemn, none but the coarse or the lewd will regard as the object of love. There is, indeed, a passion which is the love of the body. We call it by its proper name of lust. There is another emotion, for which the rich tongue of the ancient Greeks had a word, to which we have nothing to correspond. Call it, if you will, Platonic love, and define it to be an exalted friendship. But understand that neither the one nor the other is love, in the true sense of the word, and that both are inferior to it.

Does the father, watching, with moistened eyes, his child at its mother's breast; does the husband, bending with solicitude over the sick-bed of his wife; does the wife, clinging to her husband through evil report and good report, through broken fortunes and failing health, indicate no loftier emotion than lust, no warmer sentiment than friendship? What ignorance, what perversity is so gross as not to perceive something here nobler than either? Do you say that such scenes are, alas, rare? We deny it. We see them daily in the streets; we meet them daily in our rounds. Admitted, by our calling, to the sacred precincts of many houses in the trying hours of sickness and death, we speak advisedly, and know that this is the prevailing meaning of love in domestic life.

A warm, rich affection blesses the one who gives and the one who receives. Character developes under it as the plant beneath the sunlight. Happiness is an unknown word without it. Love and marriage are the only normal conditions of life. Without them, both man and woman for ever miss the best part of themselves. They suffer more, they sin more, they perish sooner. These are not hasty assertions. As a social law, let it be well understood that science pronounces that

LOVE IS A NECESSITY.

The single life is forced upon many of both sexes, in our present social condition. Many choose it from motives of economy, from timidity, or as a religious step, pleasing to God. The latter is a notion which probably arose from a belief that, somehow, celibacy, strictly observed, means chastity. It simply means continence. The chastest persons have been, and are, not the virgins and celibates, but the married. When this truth is known better, we shall have fewer sects and more religion.

We know women who refrain from marrying to keep out of trouble. The old saying is, that every sigh drives a nail in one's coffin. They are not going to worry themselves to death bearing children and nursing them! It is too great a risk, too much suffering. How often have we been told this! Yet how false the reasoning is! Very carefully prepared statistics show that between the ages of twenty and forty-five years, more unmarried women die than married, and few instances of remarkable longevity in an old maid are known. The celebrated Dr. Hufeland, therefore, in his treatise on the Art of Prolonging Life, lays it down as a rule, that to attain a great age, one must be married.

As for happiness, those who think they can best attain it outside the gentle yoke of matrimony are quite as wide of the mark. Their selfish and solitary pleasures do not gratify them. With all the resources of clubs, billiard-rooms, saloons, narcotics, and stimulants, single men make but a mock show of satisfaction. At heart every one of them envies his married friends. How much more monotonous and more readily exhausted are the resources of woman's single life! No matter what 'sphere' she is in, no matter in what 'circle' she moves, no matter what 'mission' she invents, it will soon pall on her. Would you see the result? We invoke once more those dry volumes, full of lines and figures, on vital statistics. Stupid as they look, they are full of the strangest stories; and what is more, the stories are all true. Some of them are sad stories, and this is one of the saddest: Of those unfortunates who, out of despair and disgust of the world, jump from bridges, or take arsenic, or hang themselves, or in other ways rush unbidden and unprepared before the great Judge of all, nearly two-thirds are unmarried, and in some years nearly three-fourths. And of those other sad cases—dead, yet living—who people the madhouses and asylums, what of them? Driven crazy by their brutal husbands, do you suggest? Not at all! In France, Bavaria, Prussia, Hanover, four out of every five are unmarried; and throughout the civilised world there are everywhere three or four single to one married woman in the establishments for the insane, in proportion to the whole number of the two classes above twenty-one years of age.

Other women decline to marry because they have, forsooth, a 'life work' to accomplish. Some great project fills their mind. Perchance they emulate Madame de StaËl, and would electrify the country by their novel views in politics; or they have a literary vein they fain would exploit; or they feel called upon to teach the freedmen, or to keep their position as leaders of fashion. A husband would trammel them. If they did marry, they would take the very foolish advice of a contemporary, and go through life with an indignant protest at its littleness. Let such women know that they underrate the married state, its powers and its opportunities. There are no loftier missions than can there be carried out, no nobler games than can there be played. When we think of these objections, coming, as they have to us, from high-spirited, earnest girls, the queens of their sex, our memory runs back to the famous women of history, the brightest jewels in the coronet of time, and we find as many, ay, more, married women than single who pursued to their ends mighty achievements.

If you speak of Judith and Joan of Arc, who delivered their fatherlands from the enemy by a daring no man can equal, we shall recall the peaceful victories of her, wife of the barbarian Chlodwig, who taught the rude Franks the mild religion of Nazareth, and of her who extended from Byzantium the holy symbol of the cross over the wilds of Russia. The really great women of this age, are they mostly married or single? They are mostly married, and they are good wives and tender mothers.

What we have just written, we read to an amiable woman.

'But,' she exclaimed, 'what have you to say to her whom high duties or a hard fate condemns to a single life, and to the name of the old maid?'

Alas! what can we say to such? We feel that

Yet there is ever a blessing in store for those who suffer here, and the hope of the future must teach them to bear the present.

LOVE IS ETERNAL.

We have said love is a necessity in the life of either man or woman to complete their nature. Its effects, therefore, are eternal. We do not intend this as a figure of speech. It is a sober statement of physiology.

From the day of marriage the woman undergoes a change in her whole structure. She is similar to her former self, but not the same. It is often noticed that the children of a woman in her second marriage bear a marked resemblance to her first husband. In the inferior races and lower animals this obscure metamorphosis is still more apparent. A negress who has borne her first child to a white man, will ever after have children of a color lighter than her own. Count Strzelewski, in his Travels in Australia, narrates this curious circumstance: A native woman who has once had offspring by a white man, can never more have children by a male of her own race. Dr. Darwin relates that a male zebra was once brought to England, and a hybrid race, marked by the zebra's stripes, was produced from certain mares. Always after, the colts of those mares bore the marks of the zebra on their skins. In some way the female is profoundly altered throughout her whole formation, and entirely independent of her will, by the act of marriage, and the alteration is never effaced.

If the body is thus influenced, shall not the far more susceptible mind and spirit be equally impressed?

Another common observation supports what we say, and extends it farther. Not the woman alone,—the man also undergoes a change, and loses a portion of his personality in his mate. They two are one, not merely in a moral sense. We constantly notice a decided resemblance in old couples who have passed, say, two score years together. They have grown to look alike in form, feature, and expression. That for so long a time they have breathed the same air, eaten the same fare, and been subjected to the same surroundings, explains this to some extent. But the greater part of the change flows from mental sources. They have laughed and wept together; they have shared the same joys and pleasures; a smile or a tear on the face of one has evoked a corresponding emotion and expression on the face of the other. Their co-partnership has become a unity. Even without speaking, they sympathize. Their souls are constantly en rapport. The man is as different as the woman from his former self.

OF SECOND MARRIAGES.

Science, therefore, seems to say to woman, 'Your first husband is your eternal husband.' How, then, about second marriages? Are we to say that they are not advisable?

Let us not answer hastily. It is yet to be seen whether ill-assorted marriages produce those impressions we have mentioned. They may, indeed, on the body, while the mind is free. One must remember, also, that the exigencies of social life must be consulted. If a woman cannot love two men equally,—and she cannot,—other motives, worthy of all respect, justify her in entering the marriage life a second time. Then, the higher refinements of the emotions are not given to all alike, nor do they come at the same age to all. True love may first dawn upon a woman after one or two husbands have left her a widow. Orphan children, widow-hood, want of property, or the care of property,—these are sad afflictions to the lonely woman. Do not blame her if she accepts a husband as a guardian, a protector, whom she can no longer receive to her arms as a lover. She is right.

We cherish the memory of a lady of strong character, who died past eighty. She had survived three husbands. 'The first,' she said, 'I married for love, the second for position, the third for friendship. I was happy with them all.' But when, in her mortal illness, this venerable friend sank into the delirium which preceded death, she constantly called out the name of her first husband only. More than half a century had not effaced the memory of those few years of early love. This is fidelity indeed.

OF DIVORCE.

He of Nazareth laid down the law that whoever puts away his wife for any cause except adultery, and marries again, commits adultery; and that whatever woman puts away her husband for any cause save adultery, and marries again, herself commits adultery.

This has been found a hard saying.

John Milton wrote a book to show that the Lawgiver did not mean what He said, but something quite different. Modern sects, calling themselves Christians, after this Lawgiver, dodge the difficulty, and refer it to State legislatures. State legislatures, not troubling themselves at all about any previous law or lawgiver, allow dozens of causes—scores of them—as perfectly valid to put asunder those whom God has joined together.

Science, which never finds occasion to disagree with that Lawgiver of Nazareth, here makes His words her own.

Whether we look at it as a question in social life, in morals, or in physiology, the American plan of granting absolute divorces is dangerous, and destructive to what is best in life. It leads to hasty, ill-assorted matches, to an unwillingness to yield to each other's peculiarities, to a weakening of the family ties, to a lax morality. Carry it a trifle farther than it now is in some of the Western States, and marriage will lose all its sacredness, and degenerate into a physical union, not nobler than the crossing of flies in the air.

Separation of bed and board should always be provided for by law; and whether single, married, or separated, the woman should retain entire control of her own property. But in the eyes of God and nature, a woman or a man with two faithful spouses living, to each of whom an eternal fidelity has been plighted, is a monster.

OF A PLURALITY OF WIVES OR HUSBANDS.

What has been said of divorce applies with tenfold force to the custom of a woman living as wife to several men, or of a man as husband to several women. We should not speak of these customs, but that we know both exist in America, not among the notoriously wicked, but among those who claim to be the peculiarly good—the very elect of God. They prevail, not as lustful excesses, but as religious observances.

It is worth while to say that such practices lead to physical degradation. The woman who acknowledges more than one husband is generally sterile; the man who has several wives has usually a weakly offspring, principally males. Nature attempts to check polygamy by reducing the number of females, and failing in this, by enervating the whole stock. The Mormons of Utah would soon sink into a state of Asiatic effeminacy were they left to themselves.

COURTSHIP.

A wise provision of nature ordains that woman shall be sought. She flees, and man pursues. The folly of modern reformers, who would annul this provision, is evident. Were it done away with, man, ever prone to yield to woman's solicitations, and then most prone when yielding is most dangerous, would fritter away his powers at an early age, and those very impulses which nature has given to perpetuate the race would bring about its destruction.

To prevent such a disaster, woman is endowed with a sense of shame, an invincible modesty, her greatest protection, and her greatest charm. Let her never forget it, never disregard it; for without it she becomes the scorn of her own sex and the jest of the other.

The urgency of man and the timidity of woman are tempered by the period of courtship.

This, as it exists in the United States, is something almost peculiar to Americans. On the continent of Europe, girls are shut up in convents or in seminaries, or are kept strictly under the eyes of their parents until marriage, or, at any rate, betrothal. The liberty usual in America is something unheard-of and inconceivable there. In Spain a duenna, in France some aunt or elderly cousin, in Germany some similar person, makes it her business to be present at every interview which a young lady has with an admirer. He never dreams of walking, driving, or going out of an evening with her alone. It is taken for granted that, should he invite her for such a purpose, the mother or aunt is included in the party. They would look on the innocent freedom of American girls as simply scandalous.

We have had opportunities to see society in these various countries, and have failed to perceive that the morality of either sex is at all superior to what it is with us, while the effect of cloister-like education on young women is to weaken their self-reliance, and often prepare them for greater extravagances when marriage gives them liberty.

With us, the young woman is free until her wedding day. After that epoch, she looks forward to withdrawing more or less from society, and confining her thoughts to family matters. In France, Spain, or Italy, in the wealthier classes, precisely the contrary is the rule. Marriage brings deliverance from an irksome espionage and numberless fetters; it is the avenue to a life in public and independent action. How injurious to domestic happiness this is, can readily be imagined.

It is true that the liberty of American girls occasionally leads to improprieties. But, except in certain great cities, such instances are rare. The safeguards of virtue are knowledge and self-command, not duennas and jalousies. Let mothers properly instruct their daughters, and they need have no apprehension about their conduct.

The period of courtship is one full of importance. A young woman of unripe experience must decide from what she can see of a man during the intercourse of a few months, whether he will suit her for a life-companion. She has no knowledge of human nature; and what would it avail her if she had, when at such a time a suitor is careful only to show his eligible traits? 'Go a-courting,' said old Dr Franklin, in his homely language, 'in your everyday clothes.' Not one man out of a thousand is honest enough to take his advice.

It is useless for her to ask aid of another. She must judge for herself. What, then, is she to do?

There is a mysterious instinct in a pure-minded woman which is beyond all analysis,—a tact which men do not possess, and do not readily believe in. At such a crisis this instinct saves her. She feels in a moment the presence of a base, unworthy nature. An unconscious repulsion is manifest in her eye, her voice. Where a suitor is not a man of low motive, but merely quite incongruous in temper and disposition, this same instinct acts, and the man, without being able to say just why, feels that he is laboring in vain. If he blindly insists in his wooing, he has no one to chide but himself when he is finally discarded.

But if the man is worthy, and suitable, does this blessed instinct whisper the happy news with like promptness to the maiden's soul? Ah! that raises another issue. It brings us face to face with that difficult question of

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.

Jung Stilling, a German author of note, a religious enthusiast, and full of queer fancies, was, when young, a tutor in a private family. On one occasion his employer took him to a strange house, and introduced him to a roomful of company. Stilling had not contemplated marriage; but, in the company, he saw, for the first time, a young woman who he felt was his destined wife. Walking across the room, he addressed her with the utmost simplicity, telling her that an inward monitor advised him that she, of all womankind, was his predestined helpmeet. She blushed, was confused, but presently confessed that she had experienced the same conviction on first beholding him. They married, and the most curious part of the tale remains to tell,—it is, that they proved a happy, well-matched couple.

We do not advise others to follow their example. Not many souls are capable of such reciprocity. Choosing an associate for life is too serious a business to be made the affair of a moment. Reason, reflection, thought, prayer,—these are aids in such a momentous question not to be lightly thrown aside. Many a passing fancy, many an evanescent preference, catches for a moment the new-fledged affections. But for the long and tedious journey of life we want a love rooted in knowledge.

We are not blind to the fact, that often from the first interview the maiden feels an undefined spell thrown around her by him who will become her husband. She feels differently in his presence; she watches him with other eyes than she has for the rest of men. She renders no account to herself of this emotion; she attempts no analysis of it; she does not acknowledge to herself that it exists. No matter. Sooner or later, if true to herself, she will learn what it is, and it will be a guide in that moment, looked forward to with mingled hopes and fears, when she is asked to decide on the destiny, the temporal and eternal destiny, of two human lives.

That she may then decide aright, and live free from the regrets of a false step at this crisis of life, we shall now rehearse what medical science has to say about

HOW TO CHOOSE A HUSBAND.

Woman holds as an inalienable right, in this country, the privilege of choice. It is not left to notaries, or parents, to select for her, as is the custom in some other parts of the world.

First comes the question of relationship. A school-girl is apt to see more of her cousins than of other young men. Often some of them seek at an early hour to institute a far closer tie than that of blood. Is she wise to accept it?

SHALL COUSINS MARRY?

Hardly any point has been more warmly debated by medical men. It has been said that in such marriages the woman is more apt to be sterile; that if she have children, they are peculiarly liable to be born with some defect of body or mind,—deafness, blindness, idiocy, or lameness; that they die early; and that they are subject, beyond others, to fatal hereditary diseases, as cancer, consumption, scrofula, etc.

An ardent physician persuaded himself so thoroughly of these evils resulting from marriage of relatives, that he induced the Legislature of Kentucky to pass a law prohibiting it within certain degrees of consanguinity. Many a married couple have been rendered miserable by the information that they had unwittingly violated one of nature's most positive laws. Though their children may be numerous and blooming, they live in constant dread of some terrible outbreak of disease. Many a young and loving couple have sadly severed an engagement, which would have been a prelude to a happy marriage, when they were informed of these disastrous results.

For all such we have a word of consolation. We speak it authoritatively, and not without a full knowledge of the responsibility we assume.

The risk of marrying a cousin, even a first cousin, is greatly diminished, provided there is no decided hereditary taint in the family. And when such hereditary taint does exist, the danger is little more than in marrying into any other family where it is also found. Indeed, a certain German author has urged the propriety of such unions, where the family has traits of mental or physical excellence, as a means of preserving and developing them!

So far as sterility is concerned, an examination of records shows, that whereas in the average of unions one women in eight is barren, in those between relatives but one in ten is so. And as for the early deaths of children, while, on an average, fifteen children in a hundred die under seven years, in the families of nearly-related parents but twelve in a hundred is the mortality as shown by French statistics.

The investigations about idiotic and defective children are by no means satisfactory, and are considered by some of the most careful writers as not at all proving a greater tendency to such misfortunes in the offspring of cousins. Among a thousand idiotic children recently examined in Paris, not one was descended from a healthy consanguinity.

But as few families are wholly without some lurking predisposition to disease, it is not well, as a rule, to run the risk of developing this by too repeated unions. Stock-breeders find that the best specimens of the lower animals are produced by crossing nearly-related individuals a certain number of times; but that, carried beyond this, such unions lead to degeneracy and sterility. Such, also, has been the experience of many human families.

How slight a cause even of that most insidious disease, consumption, such marriages are, may be judged from the fact, that of a thousand cases inquired into by Dr. Edward Smith, in only six was there consanguinity of parents.

THE MIXTURE OF RACES.

Mankind, say the school geographies, is divided into five races, each distinguished by its own color. They are the white, the black, the red, the yellow, and the brown races. In this country, practically, we have to do with but the white and black races; and the question is constantly asked, Shall we approve of marriages between them? Shall a white woman choose a black man to be her husband?

We are at the more pains to answer this, because recently a writer—and this writer a woman, and this woman one of the most widely known in our land—has written a novel intended to advocate the affirmative of this question. Moreover, it is constantly mooted in certain political circles, and is one of the social problems of the day.

The very fact that it is so much discussed, shows that such a union runs counter to a strong prejudice. Such aversions are often voices of nature, acting as warnings against acts injurious to the species. In this instance it is not of modern origin, created by peculiar institutions. Three centuries ago, Shakspeare, who had probably never seen a score of negroes in his life, with the divination of genius, felt the repugnance which a refined woman would feel to accepting one as her husband. The plot of one of his plays turns on it. He makes Iago say of Desdemona:

It is, indeed, 'nature erring from itself' which prompts to these marriages. They are not sterile, but the children are sickly and short-lived. Very few mulattoes reach an old age.

Then it is well known that the black race cannot survive a northern climate. Dr. Snow, of Providence, Rhode Island, who has given great attention to the study of statistics, says emphatically that, in New England, the colored population inevitably perish in a few generations, if left to themselves. This debility no woman should wish to give to her children.

A mental inferiority is likewise apparent. Friends of the negro are ready to confess this, but attribute it to his long and recent period of servitude. We deal with facts only. The inferiority is there, whatever be its cause; and she who would willingly curse her offspring with it, manifests indeed 'thoughts unnatural.'

The children born of a union of the black and red race, negroes and Indians, are on the contrary, remarkable for their physical vigor and mental acuteness; though, of course, the latter is limited to the demands of a semi-barbarous life.

SHOULD NATIVE WOMEN MARRY FOREIGNERS?

When we narrow the question of race to that of nationality, entirely new elements come in.

In speaking of the intermarriage of relatives, we showed that a certain number of such unions in healthy stocks was advantageous rather than otherwise, but that too many of them lead to deterioration. This law can be applied to nations. Historians have often observed that the most powerful states of the world arose from an amalgamation of different tribes. Rome, Greece, England, are examples of this. On the other hand, France, Russia, Spain, China, Persia, which have suffered no such crosses of blood, are either stationary, or depend for their progress on foreigners.

Physicians have contributed other curious testimony on this point, the bearing of which they themselves have not understood. Marriages between nationalities of the same race are more fertile, and the children more vigorous, than those between descendants of the same nation. For instance, it has been proved that if two descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers in Massachusetts marry, they will probably have but three children; while, if one of them marries a foreigner, the children will number five or six.

So it is well ascertained that in the old and stationary communes of France, where the same families have possessed their small farms for generation after generation, the marriages have become gradually less and less productive, until it has seriously interfered with the quota those districts send to the army.

American women have suffered many hard words because they do not have more children. Several New England writers have accused them of very bad practices, which we shall mention hereafter. But the effect of the law of production just now laid down has been quite overlooked.

As it is best that there should be four or five children in a family in ordinary circumstances, the union of American and foreign blood is very desirable. We need to fuse in one the diverse colonies of the white race annually reaching our shores. A century should efface every trace of the German, the Irish, the Frenchman, the English, the Norwegian, and leave nothing but the American. To bring about this happy result, free intermarriage should be furthered in every possible way.

THE AGE OF THE HUSBAND.

The epoch of puberty comes to a boy at about the same age as it does to a girl,—fourteen or fifteen years. And an even greater period passes between this epoch and the age it is proper for a man to marry,—his age of nubility.

Not only has he a more complete education to obtain, not only a profession or trade to learn, and some property to accumulate, some position to acquire, ere he is ready to take a wife, but his physical powers ripen more slowly than those of woman. He is more tardy in completing his growth, and early indulgence more readily saps his constitution.

We have placed the best age for woman to marry between twenty and twenty-five years; for similar reasons, man is best qualified to become a husband between twenty-three and thirty-three years.

Previous to the twenty-third year, many a man is incapable of producing healthy children. If he does not destroy his health by premature indulgence, he may destroy his happiness by witnessing his children a prey to debility and deformity. An old German proverb says, 'Give a boy a wife, and a child a bird, and death will soon knock at the door.' Even an author so old as Aristotle warns young men against early marriage, under penalty of disease and puny offspring.

From the age of thirty-three to fifty years, men who carefully observe the laws of health do not feel any weight of years. Nevertheless, they are past their prime. Then, also, with advancing years, the chances of life diminish, and the probability increases that they will leave a young family with no natural protector. The half-century once turned, their vigor rapidly diminishes. The marriages they then contract are either sterile, or yield but few and sickly children. Many an old man has shortened his life by late nuptials; and the records of medicine contain accounts of several who perished on the very night of marriage.

The relative age of man and wife is next to be considered. Nature fits woman earlier for marriage, and hints thereby that she should, as a rule, be younger than her husband. So, too, the bard of nature speaks:

The woman who risks her happiness with a man many years younger than herself, violates a precept of life; and when her husband grows indifferent, or taunts her with her years, or seeks companions of more suitable age, she is reaping a harvest sown by her own hand.

So commonly do such matches turn out badly, that in 1828 the kingdom of WÜrtemberg prohibited unions where the woman was more than twelve years the senior, except by special dispensation.

After forty-five years, most women cannot hope for children. A marriage subsequent to this period can at best be regarded as a close friendship. Marriage in its full meaning has no longer an existence.

The relative age of man and wife has another influence, and quite a curious one. It influences the sex of the children. But this point we reserve for discussion on a later page.

The folly of joining a young girl to an old man is happily not so common in America as in Europe. It would be hard to devise any step more certain to bring the laws of nature and morality into conflict.

What advice can we give to a woman who barters her youthful charms for the fortune of an aged husband? Shall we be cynical enough to agree with 'auld Auntie Katie?'

No! She has willingly accepted a responsibility. It is her duty to bear it loyally, faithfully, uncomplainingly to the end.

Let us sum up with the maxim, that the husband should be the senior, but that the difference of age should not be more than ten years.

WHAT SHOULD BE HIS TEMPERAMENT?

It is often hard to make out what doctors mean by temperaments. It is supposed that our mental and physical characters depend somehow on the predominance of some organ or system which controls the rest. Thus a person who is nervous, quick, sensitive to impressions, is said to have a nervous temperament; one who is stout, full-blooded, red-faced, has a sanguine temperament; a thin, dark-featured, reticent person, is of a bilious temperament; while a pale, fat, sluggish nature, is called phlegmatic, or lymphatic.

In a general way these distinctions are valuable, but they will not bear very exact applications. They reveal in outline the constitution of mind and body; and what is to our present purpose, they are of more than usual importance in the question of selecting a husband.

Nature, hating incongruity, yet loves variety. She preserves the limits of species, but within those limits she seeks fidelity to one type. Therefore it is that in marriage a person inclines strongly to one of a different temperament—to a person quite unlike himself.

So true is this, that a Frenchman of genius, Bernardin de St. Pierre, vouches for this anecdote of himself. He was in a strange city, visiting a friend whom he had not seen for years. The friend's sister was of that age when women are most susceptible. She was tall, a blonde, deliberate in motion, with blue eyes and fair hair. In a jesting way, St. Pierre, who had never seen her before, and knew nothing of her personal life, said,—

'Mademoiselle, you have many admirers. Shall I describe him on whom you look with most favor?'

The lady challenged him to do so.

'He is short in stature, of dark complexion, dark hair and eyes, slight in figure, active and nervous in all his movements.'

The lady blushed to her eyes, and cast a glance of anger at her brother, who, she thought, had betrayed her secret. But no! St. Pierre's only informant was his deep knowledge of the human heart.

This instinct is founded upon the truth that the perfect temperament is that happily balanced one which holds all the organs in equilibrium,—in which no one rules, where all are developed in proportion. Nature ever strives to realize this ideal. She instills in the nervous temperament a preference for the lymphatic; in the sanguine, a liking for the bilious constitution. The offspring should combine the excellencies of both, the defects of neither. We do well to heed her admonitions here, and to bear in mind that those matches which combine opposite temperaments, are, as a rule, the most fortunate.

THE MORAL AND MENTAL CHARACTER.

Very few words are necessary here. We have already said we speak as physicians, not as moralists. But there are some false and dangerous ideas abroad, which it is our duty as physicians to combat.

None is more false, none more dangerous, than that embodied in the proverb, 'A reformed rake makes the best husband.' What is a rake? A man who has deceived and destroyed trusting virtue,—a man who has entered the service of the devil to undermine and poison that happiness in marriage, which all religion and science are at such pains to cultivate. We know him well in our capacity as physicians. He comes to us constantly the prey to loathsome diseases, the results of his vicious life; which diseases he will communicate to his wife, for they are contagious, and to his children, for they are hereditary; and which no reform can purge from his system, for they are ineradicable.

Is this the man a pure woman should take to her arms? Here repentance avails nothing. We have witnessed the agony unspeakable which overwhelmed a father when he saw his children suffering under horrible and disgusting diseases, the penalty of his early sins.

Very few men of profligate lives escape these diseases. They are alarmingly prevalent among the 'fast' youths of our cities. And some forms of them are incurable by any effort of skill. Even the approach of such men should be shunned,—their company avoided.

A physician in central Pennsylvania lately had this experience: A young lady of unblemished character asked his advice for a troublesome affection of the skin. He examined it, and to his horror recognised a form of one of the loathsome diseases which curse only the vilest or the most unfortunate of her sex. Yet he could not suspect this girl. On inquiry, he found that she had a small but painful sore on her lip, which she first noticed a few days after being at a picnic with a young man. Just as he was bidding her good-night, he had kissed her on the lips.

At once everything was clear. This young man was a patient of the physician. He was a victim to this vile disease, and even his kiss was enough to convey it.

The history of the sixteenth century contains the account of an Italian duke, who on one occasion was forced by his ruler to reconcile himself with an enemy. Knowing he could not escape obedience, he protested the most cheerful willingness, and in the presence of the king embraced his enemy, and even kissed him on the lips. It was but another means of satisfying his hatred. For he well knew that his kiss would taint his enemy's blood with the same poison that was undermining his own life.

How cautious, therefore, should a woman be in granting the most innocent liberties! How solicitous should she be to associate with the purest men!

Would that we could say that these dangerous and loathsome diseases are rare! But, alas! daily professional experience forbids us to offer this consolation. Every physician in our large cities, and even in smaller towns, knows that they are fearfully prevalent.

We have been consulted by wives, pure, innocent women, for complaints which they themselves, and sometimes their children, suffered from, the nature of which we dared not tell them, but which pointed with fatal finger to the unfaithfulness of the husband. How utterly was their domestic happiness wrecked when they discovered the cause of their constant ill-health!

Nor are such occurrences confined to the humbler walks of life. There, perhaps, less than in any other do they occur. It is in the wealthy, the luxurious, the self-indulgent class that they are found.

Are we asked how such a dreadful fate can be averted?

There are, indeed, certain signs and marks which such diseases leave with which physicians are conversant. As if nature intended them as warnings, they are imprinted on the most visible and public parts of the body. The skin, the hair, the nose, the voice, the lines on the face, often divulge to the trained observer, more indubitably than the confessional, a lewd and sensual life.

Such signs, however, can only be properly estimated by the medical counselor, and it would be useless to rehearse them here. Those women who would have a sure guide in choosing a man to be their husband, have they not Moses and the prophets? What is more, have they not Christ and the apostles? Rest assured that the man who scoffs at Christianity, who neglects its precepts and violates its laws, runs a terrible risk of bringing upon himself, his wife, and his children, the vengeance of nature, which knows justice but not mercy. Rest assured that the man who respects the maxims of that religion, and abstains from all uncleanness, is the only man who is worthy the full and confiding love of an honorable woman.

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE HUMAN BODY.

Philosophers say that every idle word which is spoken continues to vibrate in the air through all infinity. So it is with the passions and the thoughts. Each impresses on the body some indelible mark, and a long continuance of similar thoughts leaves a visible imprint.

Under the names of phrenology, physiognomy, palmistry, and others, attempts have been made at divers times to lay down fixed principles by which we could judge of men by their outsides; but only vague results have been obtained. A learned German author, of high repute in exact science, has gone a different way to work. He has studied the body as a whole, and sought with the eye of an anatomist how different avocations, passions, temperaments, habits, mould and fashion the external parts of man. His results are embraced in a curious volume which he entitles The Symbolism of the Human Body. We shall borrow some hints from it, germane to our present theme.

As to size, large-bodied and large-boned men possess greater energy, a more masculine character, but often less persistence, and are usually devoid of the more delicate emotions. Fat people are good-tempered, but indolent; thin people, full of life, but irascible.

The neck is a significant part of the body. View it from in front, and it discloses the physical constitution. There are the conduits of the food and the air; there, the great blood-vessels pass to the head, and its base is modified by their form as they pass from the heart. When broad and full, it denotes a vigorous physical life,—a plethoric constitution. A distinguished teacher of midwifery, Professor Pajot of Paris, says that when he sees one of those necks full in front, like that of Marie Antoinette, as shown in her portraits, he prepares himself to combat childbed convulsions. That queen, it is well-known, nearly perished with them.

The back of the neck contains the vertebral column, and is close to the brain. It reveals the mental constitution. The short round neck of the prize-fighter betrays his craft. The slender, arched, and graceful neck of the well-proportioned woman is the symbol of health and a well-controlled mind. Burke, in his Essay on the Beautiful, calls it the most beauteous object in nature. It is a common observation, that a sensual character is shown by the thick and coarse development of this portion of the body.

The hair, also, has a significance. Fine whitish hair, like that of a child, goes with a simple, child-like disposition; black hair denotes a certain hardness of character; red hair has long been supposed to be associated with a sensual constitution, but it rather indicates a physical weakness,—a tendency to scrofula. This is, however, a tendency merely. Thin hair is often the result of protracted mental labor, though many other causes produce it.

Every great man, says Herder, has a glance which no one can imitate. We may go farther, and say that every man of decided character reveals it in his eyes. They are the most difficult organs for the hypocrite to control. Beware of the man who cannot look you in the eyes, and of him in whose eyes there lurks an expression which allures yet makes you shudder. The one has something he dares not tell you, the other something you dare not listen to.

Symmetry, strength, grace, health,—these are admirable qualities in a man. From the remotest ages they have been the marks of heroes. Secondary though they are to moral and mental qualities, they should be ever highly valued. A manly man! Nature designs such to be the sires of future generations. No danger that we shall fall to worshiping physical beauty again. The only fear is that in this lank, puny, scrawny generation of ours, we shall, out of vanity, underrate such beauty. Let it be ever remembered that this is the ideal, from which any departure is deterioration.

THE ENGAGEMENT.

When our grandmothers were engaged, the minister rose in his pulpit on Sunday morning, before the assembled congregation, and proclaimed the 'banns,' stating that if any one knew just cause or lawful impediment why the lovers should not be married, he should state it there and then. Sometimes a great hubbub was created when some discarded suitor rose, forbidding the banns, and claimed that the capricious maiden had previously promised herself to him. Perhaps it was to avoid such an uncomfortable check on the freedom of flirtation that the ancient custom was dropped.

Certain it is, that to be 'engaged' sits very lightly on the minds of both young men and maidens now-a-days. We know some of either sex who make it a boast how often they have made and unmade this slender tie. It is a dangerous pastime. 'The hand of little use hath the daintier touch,' and they who thus trifle with their affections will end by losing the capacity to feel any real affection at all.

Undoubtedly there occur instances where a woman has pledged herself in all seriousness, and afterwards sees her affianced in a light which warns her that she cannot be happy with him,—that the vows she will be called upon to pronounce at the altar will be hollow and false. What is she to do?

We are not inditing the decrees of the Court of Love. Here is the advice of another to her hand:

They are hurtful, and they are unnecessary. Is love so vagrant that it must be tied by such a chain? Better let it go. True love asks no oath; it casteth out fear, and believes without a promise.

There are other reasons, sound physiological reasons, which we could adduce, if need were, to show that the close personal relations which arise between persons who are engaged should not be continued too long a time. They lead to excitement and debility, sometimes to danger and disease. Especially is this true of nervous, excitable, sympathetic dispositions.

If we are asked to be definite, and give figures, we should say that a period not longer than a year, nor shorter than three months, should intervene between the engagement and the marriage.

THE RIGHT TIME OF YEAR TO MARRY.

Woman, when she marries, enters upon a new life, and a trying one. Every advantage should be in her favour. The season is one of those advantages. Extreme heat and extreme cold both wear severely on the human frame. Mid-winter and mid-summer are, therefore, alike objectionable, especially the latter.

Spring and fall are usually chosen, as statistics show, and the preference is just. On the whole, the spring is rather to be recommended than the autumn. In case of a birth within the year, the child will have attained sufficient age to weather its period of teething more easily ere the next summer.

THE RIGHT TIME IN THE MONTH TO MARRY.

We mean the woman's own month, that which spans the time between her periodical sicknesses, be it two or five weeks. Let her choose a day about equidistant from two periods. The reasons for this we shall specify hereafter.

THE WEDDING TOUR.

Custom prescribes a journey immediately after marriage, of a week or a month or two. It is an unwise provision. The event itself is disturbance enough for the system; and to be hurried hither and thither, stowed in narrow berths and inconvenient carriages, troubled with baggage, and annoyed by the importunities of cabmen, waiters, and hangers-on of every description, is enough, in ordinary times, to test the temper of a saint.

The foundation of many an unhappy future is laid on the wedding tour. Not only is the young wife tried beyond all her experience, and her nervous system harassed, but the husband, too, partakes of her weakness. Many men, who really love the women they marry, are subject to a slight revulsion of feeling for a few days after marriage. 'When the veil falls, and the girdle is loosened,' says the German poet Schiller, 'the fair illusion vanishes.' A half regret crosses their minds for the jolly bachelorhood they have renounced. The mysterious charms which gave their loved one the air of something more than human, disappear in the prosaic sunlight of familiarity.

Let neither be alarmed, nor lose their self-control. Each requires indulgence, and management, from the other; both should demand from themselves patience and self-command. A few weeks, and this danger is over; but a mistake now is the mistake of a lifetime. More than one woman has confessed to us that her unhappiness commenced from her wedding tour; and when we inquired more minutely, we have found that it arose from an ignorance and disregard of just such little precautions as we have been referring to.

Yet it is every way advisable that the young pair should escape the prying eyes of friends and relatives at such a moment. Let them choose some quiet resort, not too long a journey from home, where they can pass a few weeks in acquiring that more intimate knowledge of each other's character as essential to their future happiness.

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