no further. None can so distinctly trace the course of Providence as they who have been led to a point of union by different paths; and none are so ardent in their adoration as they who rejoice that that Providence has led them to each other. To none is life so rich as to those who gather its treasures only to shed them into each other's bosom; and to none is heaven so bright as to those who look for it beyond the blackness and tempest which overshadow one distant portion of their path. Thus does love help piety; and as for that other piety which has humanity for its object, must not that heart feel most of which tenderness has become the element? Must not the spirit which is most exercised in hope and fear be most familiar with hope and fear wherever found? How distinctly I saw all this in those who are now sanctifying their first Sabbath of wedded love! Yet how few who smiled and wept at their union looked in it for all that might be found!-Miss Martineau.

TESTIMONY OF A BACHELOR.

I have observed that a married man, falling into misfortune, is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than a single one, chiefly because his spirits are soothed by domestic endearments, and self-respect kept alive by finding that, although all abroad be darkness and humiliation, yet there is still a little world of love at home of which he is monarch; whereas a single man is apt to run to waste and self-neglect, to fall to ruins, like some deserted mansion for want of an inhabitant.- Washington Irving.

OLD MAIDS.

The reader of the preceding pages need not be told here that we consider singleness a great evil. If the well-constituted and healthy man remain single, it is generally his own fault. The reasons he offers for his bachelorism are, with few exceptions, fallacious; but what shall the poor girl do, when "nobody comes to woo?" She may be healthy, well-developed, warm-hearted, loving, and in every way fitted for wifely and motherly duties, but she can not accept till she is asked,

and while so many young men decline to marry, it is evident that, at least, an equal number of young women must, perforce, remain single. The case is a hard one, but not so hard as that of the woman who is mated with a brute in human shape, or even with a worthy man who is unsuited to her in organization, habits, and notions of life. A late writer says:

"To be the mother of great and good men or women is a fate worthy of any woman. She who rears a child fit to be a citizen of this great republic makes a noble contribution to the glory of God and the progress of humanity. All praise, then, to the loving, faithful mothers of the land! Their mis sion may well be coveted by right-thinking, earnest souls.

"But when we see young women looking forward to this change in their state as to something that is to release them from all responsibility, when they regard it as achieving for them entire independence of the labors and liabilities of life, and when we see them, as a consequence, eager only to secure a husband, even neglecting, in their eagerness, to require with him a truly manly character, when on this account we see so many lovely girls throwing themselves away upon miserable semblances of men, unworthy the companionship of any respectable woman-when we see all this, we can not help feeling that there is a weakness somewhere."

SOMETHING WORSE THAN SINGLENESS.

Is it really such a terrible thing to go through the world. single? I know that God in his mercy, as well as in his wisdom, has made the heart of woman to abound with the most unselfish affection. But surely there are objects, infinite in number, upon which this affection may be exercised, so that the heart need not remain utterly void. Indeed, we may say far more than this. Let any human being really go forth in the exercise of true affection for God's rational creatures, and there will rise up not one, but hundreds of responding hearts, worthy of the affection that appeals to them. Ah! old maids are not the most withered of earth's flowers. The emptiest, ghastliest hearts are those of women who have bartered their love for some unworthy thing-for an establishment, for a

mustache, and a coat that belongs to the tailor, or for the phantom that promises a relief from the doom of being an old maid. These are the saddest wrecks.

A ROLL OF HONOR.

"Let us then call over the names of a few of the women who have become eminent as contributors to the sum of human happiness, or the cause of good morals, and see if any of them were members of the sisterhood of Old Maids. From the distant past we have the name of the gifted Hypatia, devoting her powers with a calm earnestness to the investigation of scientific truth, and finally sacrificing her life to what she cherished as true and right. And Hypatia died at forty-five, unmarried. Next is the multitude of noble women who, in the early ages of Christianity, and down through the terrible darkness of the middle ages, amid the upheaval of the Roman empire, and the long, bloody anarchy that followed it, devoted the best energies of their loving souls to the duty of nursing the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and in general of relieving the distresses of the poor, the unfortunate, and the suffering-Sisters of Mercy in very deed. And these were wedded only to their divine work. In our own times we have Mary Lyon, accomplishing by her own self-sacrificing energy the beneficent purpose, conceived by herself, which had been pronounced impracticable by the men she had consulted, but which stands to-day an honorable testimony to the Christian benevolence that welled up in the heart of an old maid. And what multitudes of the poor, the insane, and the helpless, in our country, have reason to invoke blessings upon that noble friend of theirs, mighty in her gentleness, Dorothea Dix, who passed from State to State like an angel of mercy, arousing even hardened politicians to a strange appreciation of their duties to the unfortunate, and leaving in her wake substantial tokens of her regard in the form of asylums for the lunatic, the orphan, the blind, and the dumb? And Dorothea Dix still bears her maiden name. In our accounts of the Cr mean war we have read of the good deeds of Florence Nightingale, until we have endowed her in our own minds with a

sort of angelic excellence and loveliness, as she flitted from couch to couch in the hospitals, administering a kind word here, and a cordial there, until she was idolized by the army, and worn out by her labor and exposure to disease. But this glowing heroine is an unmarried woman of fifty years of age, and was more than thirty at the time of her Eastern work of love."

Surely this is a record of which any class of our population might well be proud. We need not always pity, and should never despise an old maid.

IN THE SINGLENESS.

In singleness I walk the vale of life,

Gathering some sweet-lipp'd flowers upon my way;
Though love at times may wake its tender strife,
Heart, once a tyrant, must resign its sway.

What though for me no husband smiles at morn,
Showing the path my duteous feet should tread,
My lot is freedom, on whose wings I'm borne,
Uncheck'd and happy as the lark o'erhead.

What though no children nestle on my breast,
Or sport around me 'mong the garden flowers,
Making, by Nature's law, the heart most blest,
And sandaling with gold the tripping hours;

Methinks I may escape full many a tear;

Those we love best and cherish oftest die;
Sad, too, to leave on earth the prized and dear:
Then for a mother's joys I will not sigh.

Fancies, sweet fancies shall my children be,

And birds, and flowers, and all bright things around

No discord reigns in Nature's family,

Pleasure in eac 1 fair scene and soothing sound.

XV.

Polygamy and Pantagamy.

A bishop must be blameless, the husband of one wife.-St. Pau. In history, races of men are powerful in mind and body, exactly in the ratio of their monogamic life.-Michelet.

P

ANCIENT POLYGAMY.

OLYGAMY, practiced by the patriarchs, was continued among the Jews as long as they continued to be an independent nation. It was the custom for a man to have as many wives as he pleased, provided he could perform toward them all the duties of a husband.

Polygamy has been allowed and practiced in China, Hindostan, Persia, Turkey, Arabia, and nearly all Africa. It also prevailed in Mexico and Peru, and among some of the aboriginal tribes of the northern portion of this continent.

The ancient Egyptians and Greeks, though not generally or extensively polygamists, allowed concubinage. Socrates had two wives. Monogamy became the law of Rome from the scarcity of women in its early stages, when wives were obtained with difficulty, and even violence was at times resorted to, as in the rape of the Sabines; still, polygamy was common over a large portion of Europe till within a comparatively recent period. In fact, a plurality of wives was allowed in some European countries as late as the sixteenth century. It was permitted, though not encouraged, by Martin Luther and the principal Reformers of his day. Polygamy was finally, at a later date, absolutely interdicted by the Church.

THE MORMON SYSTEM.

The Mormon system of a plurality of wives is in substance