anything but conjugal harmony. Where the lack of culture is on the part of the husband, the results are sometimes even more painful.

There are exceptional cases. Some men and women lack culture simply through the want of educational privileges, and manifest the strongest desire to make good all their deficiencies. In such cases, however much the lack may be regretted, we would not make it a bar to marriage with a person of superior culture. When one has arrived at a marriageable age, it is a late day on which to commence an education; but better late than never. Many a person has begun the work of mental culture at thirty, or even forty years of age, and yet become distinguished for learning and its practical application; so there is no cause for despair. To the loving husband or wife, the office of teacher may be made a delightful one, and the progress of the beloved pupil rapid and satisfactory; but marriage brings with it other duties and responsibilities, which are likely to interfere sadly with the home school; so we must not hope too much from it.

SOCIAL POSITION.

Man and woman should meet, as nearly as possible, on the same plane of social position and mental status. Kings and milkmaids form blissful alliances only in the musical measures of old-time ballads, and it is in the same records alone that beggars marry princesses, and fair faces atone for the absence of brain, position, and common sense! Very few people are happy who marry either much above or much below their station in life. If one of the life partners must be superior, it had better be the husband. A woman easily learns to look up, and it is natural for the man to assume a protecting superiority, even when there is no real ground for it; but woe betide the couple where the woman looks down on him whom she has solemnly promised to love and honor.

Nor should there be any insuperable difference in the mental capacity, for, even supposing them to be well mated at first, a man generally grows in mind and brain as he progresses onward with a progressive world, and his wife must either

grow with him, a companion in every sense of the word, or be left behind, a mere doll to be hung with silks and jewels, or a drudge to cook his dinners and take care of his children. Remember this, girls, when you are inclined to lag behind in the widening path of ever-new discoveries and developments, and don't follow the example of Lot's wife!

RELIGIOUS CONSIDERATIONS.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in one of his discourses, in commenting on the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, said: "Jacob's father forbade him to take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Why? Because he knew that with the wife he would take the religion; that had he brought into his house the fairest and discreetest of wives, he would have brought in the cause of a long train of miseries with her. It is an old proverb, that a man is what his wife will let him be; and old Isaac was a wise man when he said, 'Don't go among the Canaanites to get a wife.' Canaan nowadays is everywhere. It is every house where there has been no family prayer, where mammon is God; wherever there is a godless household, there is the land of Canaan. A man that marries a good wife has very little more to ask of the Lord till he dies. A good wife is a blessing from the Lord, and there are very few blessings that he gives now or hereafter that are comparable to it. And marriage is a thing not heedlessly to be rushed into, but slowly, discreetly. It is anything but a fancy or a calculation. It is a matter of moral judgment and duty as high as any duty that lifts itself between you and the face of God.. It is not wise to mix religions. A man who marries a wife of a different religion from his own, thinking afterward to bend her to his views, has very little idea of timber."

VII.

ourtship.

I love thee, and I feel

That on the fountain of my heart a seal
Is set to keep its waters pure and bright
For thee.--Shelley.

And had he not long read

The heart's hushed secret in the soft dark eye,
Lighted at his approach, and on the cheek
Coloring all crimson at his lightest look?-L. E. L.

FALLING IN LOVE.

UR devotion to science, and our faith in the law of . conjugal selection, as set forth in the preceding chapter, do not prevent us from believing in love. In all ages, from the days of Adam and Eve to the present time, men have been accustomed to "fall in love” with women, and women with men; and so they will continue to do, we have no doubt, so long as men and women are constituted as at present.

We do not leave love out of the account by any means, but we desire to impress upon the minds of our readers the fact, that it should be subjected to the guidance of reason and the restraining influence of the moral sentiments. Love is a strong passion. When once firmly seated on the throne of the human heart, it can not easily be deposed. We must guard well all the approaches to the stronghold of the affections. We must not permit the little god to come in till judgment shall have approved and conscience crowned him.

In plain words, there should be no "falling in love," except with suitable persons. The rules we have laid down, in connection with such a knowledge of physiology, phrenology, and

physiognomy as every person old enough to marry ought to possess, will enable any sensible to judge who are and who are not adapted to them.

young man or young woman

How To Do IT.

"Marriage is a lottery," they say. Too often, we fear, it is something like this; but it need not be so, as we have already shown. A young man with a thorough knowledge of physiology, phrenology, and physiognomy, and who had properly studied his own organization, would never "fall in love" with a girl mentally and temperamentally unsuited to himself. His standard of excellence and of beauty would be founded, first, on a knowledge of what is intrinsically good in mental and physical organization, and second, on what is adapted to harmonize with his own constitution and disposition; and none but those possessing those qualities would seem lovable to him. Wanting a companion and a helpmeet, he would never wish to marry a doll for the sake of her "pretty" face. No face would be beautiful to him which has not soul in it; and knowing the "signs of character," he could not be deceived. So the trifler, the profligate, or the heartless fortunehunter would pay his court in vain to the physiologically, phrenologically, and physiognomically educated young woHis blandishments, his soft words, and flattering compliments would avail him nothing. She would be disgusted and repelled by such persons, because, to her, the cloak which they think to make of their artful manners and language would be perfectly transparent. She would read not only their characters, but the history of their dissipated and dishonorable lives on their faces.

man.

LOVE AND FATE.

There is a theory, too generally accepted, that love can not be evaded that there is destiny in it-in a word, that you can not help yourself. A late writer disposes of this assumption as follows: "It is the greatest mistake in the world to suppose that love is not subject to control. Why do we not fall in love with our sisters? Simply because we know that

we must not, and ought not. Perhaps you may be inclined to give me a different answer, saying, because they are our sisters. But this answer, in reality, means the same as the other, although people seem to imagine that it means something different. They seem to imply that there is the same impossibility of falling in love with a sister as there is to become enamored of a female belonging to a different species. There is no such impossibility. Men have frequently become enamored of women of whose consanguinity they were ignorant. The reason you do not entertain a passion for your sisters is, not because they are your sisters, but because you know that they are because they and you from infancy have been trained never to think of each other in the light of lovers-because, if ever you are struck with your sister's beauty, it never occurs to you that you can call this beauty yours-because, in short, you know from the moment you can entertain a thought of love, that the passion, as regards your sister, is hopeless, useless, vain, wicked-that it can and must be controlled. Or take another case. How is it that we do not fall in love with women who are out of our own sphere of life? A man sees a princess whom, if she were of his own rank, he might covet for his bride. He can not help admiring her, but does he think of her with love? and if he does not think of her with love, why not but for this cause, that the knowledge of her rank exerts over his emotion an unconscious control? So that it is nearly as impossible for an ordinary mortal' to fall in love with a princess as to fall in love with his own sister. The conclusion to be drawn from which is, that since the passion of love is thus shown to be capable of control in certain cases, there can be no reason to suppose that it is not controllable in all. To teach otherwise, is only to propagate a mischievous fallacy. It may not always be controllable if we allow it to take possession of our minds; but it is always so if we choose to be on our guard against its approaches."

Another says: "Choosing a wife is no such puzzling enigma as it used to be, before the lights of modern science shone across this nineteenth century of ours. If you marry an angel, and discover afterward that she is something very far removed