GOOD HABITS.

Habits ruinous to health or morals, in either sex, should be a bar to marriage. Intemperance, gambling, general licentiousness, and self-abuse involve consequences too terrible to be extended beyond the individual who has subjected himself to these vices. It is hardly necessary to warn the right-minded virtuous young woman against the actual sot or the notorious blackleg. They are too repulsive to be dangerous to the pure and refined; but there are those who have entered the downward path which leads to degradation, if not to crime, but who have not yet lost the power to make themselves agreeable, and who have the manners and bearing of gentlemen. They are fond of billiards and cards, too fond of the social glass, are not always judicious in the choice of their companions, and sometimes betray their disreputable associations by the use of profanity or slang. These are the dangerous men. Depend upon it, their path is downward, and they would drag you with them. Allow no such person to approach you with professions of love till they have retraced their steps, purged and purified their souls and bodies, and made themselves worthy of that greatest of all earthly boons, a pure woman's love. You need not look far among your acquaintances for examples of the opposite course and its consequences. Ask the worse than widowed mother of those ragged, halfstarved children what has brought ruin and misery upon her once comfortable home. She is the wife of a drunkard; but she did not marry a drunkard. She would not have listened for a moment to such a one. William was a gay, genial, jovial, warm-hearted young man, smoked, drank, and played, but kept himself well dressed, outwardly clean and respectable, and was very agreeable in his manners. She was young and thoughtless. A few years have passed, and you see whereshe is. This result was foreshadowed in the beginning of her intercourse with the young man. A better knowledge of human nature would have shown her what must be the tendency of those convivial and ruinous habits, which then gave her no alarm. "A word to the wise" should be enough here.

The fairer sex, we are sorry to be obliged to say, are not

free from habits tending to unfit them for marriage-habits injurious to health and destructive to the morals. Tight lacing and other fashionable follies, late hours, social dissipation, and other abuses of the constitution are undermining the health, destroying the beauty, and incapacitating for the enjoyments as well as the duties of married life many of our young women. We should fail in our duty if we were to remain silent in regard to the ruinous consequences of marrying such poor unfortunate victims of folly and fashion. Better remain single for life than to become yoked in the holy bonds of matrimony with one who is incapable alike of being a helpmeet, in the true sense of the word, or the mother of a family. Beware of painted faces and "made up" figures, as well as of idle habits, frivolity, extravagance, and inanity.

MORAL PRINCIPLES.

In addition to a good physical organization, a well-developed social nature, and sufficient intellectual capacity to fit one for the ordinary business of life, we must insist upon the necessity of correct moral principles as essential to usefulness and happiness in the marriage relation. The domestic propensities are blind instincts intended for our good, and to insure the perpetuation of the race and the establishment and preservation of social order, but they need the guidance of reason and the controlling and restraining influences of the moral or spiritual sentiments. If these be lacking or weak, the social organs may become perverted, and lead to the most lamentable abuses. Even the intellect may be made the instrument of evil as well as of good; in fact, mere intellectual ability, unsanctified by religion and uncontrolled by moral principle, very often proves a curse to its possessor and to the world.

Allow, then, no personal advantages, no evidences of a social disposition, no degree of intellectual ability, to blind you to the lack of moral principle. Better attempt to cross the ocean without a compass, than to embark on the sea of matrimony in a bark without the helm of conscientiousness, and with a pilot who has no better guiding star than poor un

sanctified human reason. "Youth, beauty, health, strength, good manners, reputable connections, good sense, and amiability, with other natural or acquired endowments, may be sought in marriage; but the most indispensable qualification in a husband or a wife, and one which is most frequently made of little importance, is a good moral and religious character. With this, many other deficiencies may be easily borne; but without it, the most splendid natural and acquired gifts will fail to meet the wants of the truly pious man or woman." "How swift the heavenly course they run,

Whose hearts, whose faith, whose hopes are one!"

The

III.

he Right Age to Marry.

Although my heart in carlier youth

Might kindle with more wild desire,

Believe me, it has gained in truth

Much more than it has lost in fire.-Moore.

PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS.-MAN'S DOMINION.

I

EN the case of the lower animals, nature has determined the mating season, making it coincident with the desire for union and the ability of each sex to perform its distinctive functions. It might seem, at the first glance, that the same rule ought to apply to the human race; but we must look at man, not merely in the light of nature, but in relation to the artificial conditions by which he has surrounded himself. He differs from the lower animals in his adaptation to artificial conditions. Art, to speak somewhat paradoxically, is a part of his nature. His inferiors of the animal kingdom are brought into subjection to art through his power over them, but he assumes similar conditions freely and as a matter of choice; and is improved and elevated by them, provided they are in harmony with natural laws. When they violate these laws, when art and nature are thrown into positions of antagonism, as they often are under the present order of things, deterioration and decadence are the results. Man has dominion over nature.

The unphysiological habits and pernicious systems of education so prevalent at the present day, especially in cities, tend to produce precocity and a depreciation of vital stamina. The natural order of development is often subverted, and the desires and passions which should come only with the full development of the physical system, are prematurely and ab

normally manifested. It will not do to make these premature manifestations the criterions of fitness for the conjugal union.

In utter disregard of these considerations, some have recommended that marriage should take place as soon as the desire for union shall manifest itself, which may be at the age of from twelve to fourteen in the young woman, and from fourteen to sixteen in the young man, or in some cases even earlier.* Others contend that they should not marry before they have reached maturity of body, if not of mind. Dr. Johnson, an eminent English writer, says that from twenty-eight to thirty in the male, and from twenty-three to twenty-five in the female, may be considered as the average periods of bodily maturity, and that the female should be at least twentyone years of age, and the male at least twenty-eight, before they become united in marriage. This opinion is founded on observations made in Europe. Physical maturity arrives a little earlier in the United States.

It is difficult to lay down any exact rule in regard to the right age to marry, except the general one, that there should be such a degree of bodily and mental development as shall fit the parties for the proper performance of all the duties involved in the conjugal relation. With this limitation, we are decidedly in favor of early marriages. In the northern portions of the United States, a good average age for the male is from twenty-two to thirty, and for the female from eighteen to twenty-six. In the South, both sexes reach maturity sooner, and may marry somewhat earlier, say from one to two years.

EARLY MARRIAGES.

By early marriages, we do not mean the union of mere boys

* Practical illustrations of this doctrine are not lacking, but they occur mainly among savage or barbarous tribes, whose habits are less artificial than those of the highly civilized nations of Europe and America. In India, if a person sees girls of more than twelve years of age unmarried in a family, he says: "How is it that a Brahmin can sit at home and eat his food with comfort when his daughters at such an age remain unmarried?" In China, the matrimonial age varies from twelve to fourteen in females, and from sixteen to twenty in males. Mongolian women, in a climate as cold as Sweden, or even farther north, are married between eleven and twelve. On the other hand, the ancient Gauls thought it a disgrace to marry carly. Aristotle taught that the proper age for men was thirty-seven, and for women eighteen; and Plato recommended thirty for males, and twenty for females.