money in place of a heart, yet the stronger sex is scarcely less addicted to mercenary designs in marriage. Fortune hunting is not confined to one sex, but is pursued with equal zest by both, each eager for a "good match "—in other words, a good bargain. But is it a good bargain after all? You may have obtained a large pile of gold, but is it an adequate price or a free-born spirit—for a life of love and happiness resigned and made forever impossible? Mrs. Child says:

"I never knew a marriage expressly for money that did not end unhappily. Yet managing mothers and heartless daughters are constantly playing the same unlucky game. 1 believe that men more frequently marry for love than women, because women think they shall never have a better chance, and dread to be dependent. If I may judge by my own ob servation, marrying for a home is a most tiresome way of get ting a living."

Prudence will dictate that marriage should not take place till there shall be a reasonable prospect of a comfortable sup port; but this is not so difficult to attain as many suppose, and, as a rule, need not long delay the happy consummation, where industry and economy are incited to activity by true love and sustained by the hope of a future happy home.

OTHER MATRIMONIAL BARGAINS.

There are thousands of matrimonial alliances in which there is not sufficient money on either side to serve as a temptation, but which are, nevertheless, mere contracts of self-interest with which love has nothing to do. A bachelor, for instance, gets tired of his lonely, dusty apartments and his dull, unsatisfactory life, and thinks it would be a fine thing to have some one to keep things tidy, to mend his stockings, to sew buttons on his shirt, and to have an eye on his domestic affairs generally; and he looks about for a suitable partner with just as sharp an eye to business as if he were selecting a bookkeeper or a salesman for his shop. Or a widower, with a family of young children on his hands, makes up his mind. that a wife would be less expensive than a hired housekeeper, and sets himself at work to secure one. There is no great

difficulty in finding a maiden, young or old, or a widow who will be glad to exchange the life of ill-paid drudgery to which poor unmarried women are subjected, for almost any position which promises to secure her a home and the certainty of a provision for her necessities. So the bargain is closed, and the vacant place, uninviting as it is, is filled-the one party agrecing to furnish bed and board, clothes and "pin money," and the other promising to take care of the children and attend to the dusting and the dinners. Nothing is said about a heart. If either party has one, he or she is left in undisputed possession of it. Such a bargain may sometimes prove a good one for both parties in a merely commercial point of view; but oftener 't fails, even in that respect, to give satisfaction to either. In any case, it is not marriage in the highest and best sense of the term, and brings with it none of the blessings which wedded love insures.

This is one out of the many forms which matrimonial traffic assumes, but the same false principle underlies them all. In each it is a business transaction, and not a union of hearts— the play of Hamlet, with Hamlet left out.

The poet says

MARRYING FOR BEAUTY.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

If this be true, as it may be in a certain poetic sense, then a thing of beauty is a very desirable object to have in one's house; but a pretty face, however pleasant to look upon, is not always, we are sorry to say, to be relied upon as a perennial spring of happiness. Beauty, or what generally passes for beauty, in the female face, is often but a fleeting charm.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in a letter to his son, very truly says: "Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thy self for life for that which will perhaps neither last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to tl ee of no price at all.”

The worshipers of pretty faces are mainly of the masculine gender, though women sometimes allow themselves to be led astray by a doll in pantaloons, with curling locks and a

"love of a mustache;" but the effects of the high value of beauty in the matrimonial market is to lead the fair sex to make use of expensive and often dangerous means to secure, or at least to seem to possess, the personal attractions which they have learned are so pleasing to the gentlemen; “spending their time," in the quaint language of Dean Swift, "in making nets instead of cages"-striving to gain admiration rather than to secure and retain affection.

We do not underrate beauty, nor discourage the love of it; but even in its highest forms, as manifested in the outward signs of health, physical completeness, and mental symmetry, it must not be made the dominant motive for marriage. It will not supply the place of love; and love is the true bond of union.

THE RIGHT MOTIVE.

The true motive for entering into the holy state of wedlock has been more than hinted at in the preceding pages; and may be inferred from the considerations, urged in our first chapter, where it is shown that Marriage is an ordinance of God, instituted for the promotion of human happiness, the mutual improvement of the parties united, and the perpetuation of its numerous blessings through offspring to the latest generations.

Love is made the foundation of marriage and the moving spring of obedience to the divine command. When one marries under the influence of lower motives, he sins against God and his own God-given nature.

A late writer sets this subject in the strong light of truth before certain fair ones, to whom he is speaking; and our readers of the rougher sex may take the greater portion of his remarks home to their own consciences, as equally applicable to their case:

666 'Straight is the gate and narrow is the way' that leads to a true marriage. Selfish motives, that so easily obtain supreme control in the heart, lead to ill-assorted, wretched marriages. To marry for money, to marry for position, to marry that you may not 'turn brown and be an old maid,' is to

marry in the spirit of selfishness, ruinous selfishness, and not for love's sake.

666

'Hasn't every woman a right to look out for herself?' indignantly asks one of the fair. Yes; but when you begin to talk about looking out for yourself, you venture on dangerous ground. You should remember that your married life may call you to self-sacrifice, not to self-indulgence. The constantly turning wheel of fortune may bring poverty and sickness, and if you have not love enough for a man to go through fire and flood for his sake, you had better never marry him. If you marry for anything but love, you marry for what may perish in a night. Now, do not talk selfishly or frivolously about that union which, if it be a real union of hearts, is of God, for 'love is of God,' and destined, for aught you know, to run parallel with eternity. There are two lines, often sung, and said to be sacred, but we think they are not:

'There is no union here of hearts

That finds not here an end.'

"No, a true union of hearts not even death can end, and may your marriage, my fair friend, be a true union of hearts, a true marriage, such as will be yours not only through life here, but in the life beyond, where souls rejoice forever in a perfect union."

2*

V.

Marriages of Consanguinity.

Variety's the very spice of life

That gives it all its flavor.-Cowper.

None of you shall approach [in Marriage] to any that is of kin to him.- Leviticus.

MAY COUSINS MARRY?

HE laws of the most civilized of modern nations do not forbid it. Legally, you may marry your cousin. Are such marriages admissible in a physiological point of view? European physiologists are divided on this question. In this country there are hardly two opinions. The evil effects of consanguineous marriages seem to be more strikingly manifested here than in Europe, probably because we, as a people, are less evenly balanced in organization and character than our European congeners, and therefore more liable than they to transmit excesses or deficiencies disastrous in their results upon the bodies and the minds of offspring. Be the cause what it may, our statistics show, beyond all possibility of doubt, that the marriage of cousins is not here, as a rule, permissible on physiological grounds.

THE REASONS WHY.

In all families the likeness which marks them is the ground on which we found our chief objection to the marriage of near relations. It is the similarity which in its development throws the organization more and more out of balance. Nature finds compensating influences in mixed marriages, and thus modifies and improves the progeny. Persons too much alike, even if not related, should not marry, for the reason that their