tect the fallacies which others never could perceive; or if not, that, in case of real danger, we have sufficient address to make a more successful retreat.

What, for instance, but misery can reasonably be expected when youth and age are united in marriage? The association, independently of physical and moral considerations, is unseemly and unnatural. It is not likely, in the very nature of things, that such persons can feel reciprocal attachment-that warmth of esteem which is essential to mutual affection and to mutual tenderness. Their feelings, their tempers, their pleasures and their pursuits, must in some things be dissimilar if not opposite. Such individuals should therefore be excluded from a league that requires not only unity of design, but a choice of the same means; in which the parties ought to feel equal interest and equal ardour; and where joint efforts are indispensibly requisite to permanent suc

cess.

Nor is the enjoyment of connubial felicity to be hoped by those who were induced by avarice to give their hands where they could never give their hearts. The union of such individuals can be productive of nothing but misery. The motives of attraction will not by either of them be hastily forgotten; and as the hours return in which it shall be recollected that, not the person, but the property was wedded; the very person of each to the other will excite disgust rather than complacence. They will, it is true, possess the treasure for which they entered into contract, and for which they consented to be bound; but not without a personal encumbrance that will not easily be borne, and from which probably each may be daily wishing for a speedy release.

But there are others, in whom the vice of prodigality rather than of avarice is predominant; who long for titles and honours, for equipage and dress; who are captivated with the glare of splendour and

the magnificence of show; who pant for pre-eminent distinction in the circles of fashion, and sacrifice by marrying, almost all that is venerable and lovely to gain it. These are indeed candidates for happiness, but not the happiness which conjugal endearments impart.

To these causes may be justly attributed much of the infelicity experienced in domestic life. These are not indeed the only sources of misery, but they are the most flagrant, and the most pregnant with calamity.

Those persons who, in marrying, were actuated by the purest motives, between whom there was no disparity of years, and who have since felt no abatement of esteem, will inevitably meet with many things to interrupt their quiet: but the marriages to which I allude lay a foundation for disaster. This indeed is not the formal object of stipulation, but it is virtually included in the contract: and to such marriages may

be fairly ascribed much of that profligate conduct which is so shamefully notorious in the present day, as frequently to become the subject of parliamentary discussion! and this too, not among the ignorant and vulgar, but among persons of taste and refinement; who have enjoyed all the advantages of liberal instruction; whose rank and station in life cannot fail to attract popular notice, and whose pernicious example may countenance, if not prompt others to the commission of those enormous crimes by which they themselves have deservedly become objects of abhorrence.

' Of him, to whom much is given, much shall be required. Those whom God has favoured with superior faculties, and made eminent for quickness of intuition, and accuracy of distinctions, will certainly be regarded as culpable in his eyes, for defects and deviations which, in souls less enlightened, may be comparatively guiltless. But, surely, none can think without horror on that man's condition, who has been

more wicked in proportion as he had more means of excelling in virtue, and used the light imparted from heaven only to embellish folly, and shed lustre upon crimes.'

Such, indeed, is the depravity of human nature, that there is no evil which, when left to itself, it is not capable of committing. But as this depravity is common to every individual of our species, and yet all who are precisely in the same circumstances in the marriage life are not equally abandoned, there must be superadded causes where any are eminently vitious; and there are perhaps none more destructive in themselves, or more likely to create ignominious distinction, than those detestable motives which induce thousands to marry.

'The contempt in which domestic pleasures have in modern times been held, is, says Dr. Knox, a mark of profligacy. It is also a proof of a prevailing ignorance of real enjoyment. It argues a defect in