than if the parentage is defective or bad. Nor are those worthy of gifted offspring who neglect to avail themselves of this inimitably wise and infinitely beneficent provision of nature. Nor will they, unless they chance to stumble on them. Shall the pedigree of a horse be required to have been extraordinary for beauty, speed, strength, bottom, action, and much more, before allowed to sire a farm horse, and shall no inquiries be instituted concerning the lineage of the prospective father or mother of your own dearly beloved CHILDREN, as well as boon companion? This is penny wise and pound foolish with a vengeance-is wisdom in trifles, but consummate folly in matters of eternal moment. True, a fine horse is valuable-worth all the pains taken to produce it—but how infinitely more so a splendid child? Then shall no pains be taken with its parentage? Candidates for matrimony inquire most rigidly concerning the paltry patrimony of this one and that, and choose the richest they can obtain, though most defective as companions and utterly incapable of parenting decent children, and even certain to entail consumption, or insanity, or other diseases, or even deceit, theft, vindictiveness, licentiousness, and other aggravated forms of depravity—children of which monkies ought to be ashamed-PROVIDED they can get a few DOLLARS by the financial operation, yet treat with cold neglect those who are every way capacitated to parent offspring of a high order of beauty, strength, talents, and moral excellence! Those from a diseased, miserly, bad-tempered stock are taken just as quickly-no more so, for no attention is paid to this matter-as those whose ancestors are remarkable for longevity, talents, and moral worth! Strange but true! O, when will men learn practical wisdom in these eventful matters? Should not ministers, the acknowledged expounders of duty, preach on this subject? They preach on the moral TRAINING of children, then why not on what so infinitely facilitates such training? Do they now preach any thing more important intrinsically, or half as promotive even of morals and religion? As the people look to them for their whole duty, if they should expound hereditary laws and facts, and admonish and instruct the young with all the solemnity

TO STUDY AND APPLY THESE LAWS.

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and unction of their exalted station, besides wielding their tremendous influence with most beneficial effect, they would soon effectually re-model society, almost banish vice and crime, and infinitely adorn and bless mankind.

"But our mission is Christ crucified and nothing else," say they. Granted; but should you not PREPARE THE SOIL by showing parents how to produce children highly endowed with moral sentiments, in order that your preaching may take root and bear sixty or an hundred-fold of morality and happiness? And are not these parental duties not only moral duties, but among the HIGHEST obligations we owe to our offspring and our God? How can we "love the Lord our God with all our might, mind, soul, and strength," while we entail on his image physical maladies and moral blemishes and disorders? How "love our neighbors as ourselves"-and what neighbors nearer than our own offspring-while we enfeeble their bodies and blight their souls? Nor can clergymen "declare the WHOLE council of God" without enforcing on parents this their highest grade of moral obligation. Yet, alas! they will probably be the very last even to admit, much less to proclaim them.

Then who will mount this breach for God and humanity? Doctors should, but are too intent on CURING diseases to forestall them—on dosing out pounds of cures―? kills—to administer ounces of prevention, by sowing correct hereditary seed. Lawyers, likewise, are too busy taking fees for telling lies, and scrambling over their fellow men after pelf, to give such subjects a moment's attention. Merchants are too greedy after copper, the rich in playing fool, young women in catching beaus, and married women in cooking dinners and tending children, to heed this subject. But there is a select band of Gideon's chosen few, culled out by test after test, who will blow the trumpet of reform on the one hand, and on the other, distribute this kind of knowledge. To such this work is commended. Take and urge it upon married and single, especially upon those on the matrimonial look out, and more especially upon YOUNG WOMEN. Warn and remonstrate with them not to deck their persons attractively, nor cast looks of love, till they have learned their duties as prospective mothers, or

MISSION.

how to parent superior offspring. Thoroughly imbue every matrimonial candidate with the cardinal principles of hereditary descent embodied in this work, and rouse all to the importance of LEARNING AND FULFILLING THE LAWS OF TRANSTeach mankind how to PARENT, and then how to EDUCATE humanity, and you transform the world! Then shall the garden of Eden cover the whole earth, and all who inhabit it be rendered incalculably holy and happy! Then will the current of human capability and progression widen and deepen as it flows on from generation to generation, irrigating the valley of time as it meanders through it, and pouring exhaustless blessings upon all mankind, till it empties into the boundless ocean of infinite perfection and eternal bliss, multiplying countless throngs, marred with no intellectual defect, stained with no moral depravity, full to overflowing, in every department of their complicated nature, with every possible perfection, every conceivable felicity which the power and wisdom of God can bestow, and the nature of man enjoy! O merciful Father, open thou the closed eyes of thy children, to see these things in their true light, and quicken their consciences, till they shall dare to slumber no longer on the verge of such momentous consequences for evil, and so exalted a means of good. And may this work go forth to promote so glorious an end!

But parental duty is not complete when the right companion is CHOSEN. Much, very much depends on the particular STATES of the minds and bodies of these parents AT THE TIME they stamp the impress of being and character upon their offspring. This subject the author has deemed so all important that he has devoted an entire volume to its consideration, entitled "Love AND PARENTAGE.” Those, therefore, who derive interest or profit from the perusal of the subject of this volume, will derive still more from its continuance in that.

APPENDIX.

"THE FAMILY BIOGRAPHER AND GENEALOGICAL RECORDER."

THE following prospectus of a work by the author was written in 1843, but has lain unpublished in his desk because he could not spare time and strength to carry it into execution, and is now published, not because he contemplates its immediate execution, but to call attention to the importance of preserving and recording this species of history:

"BIOGRAPHY is more interesting and instructive than any other species of reading, because

"The greatest study of mankind is man,"

and because it constitutes the cream of history. The Natural History of animals is a pleasant and profitable study, but that of the characteristics, achievements, attainments, and virtues of nations and individuals, is as much more so as its subject-man-excels brute. What else can teach lessons equally instructing or profitable to all, and especially the young? "Since individual and national history is thus useful, how much more so that of FAMILIES, from generation to generation, and throughout all their branches and individuals? Hence, most biographies open with some account of the parents of their heroes. How much, then, would a short history of the grand and great-grandparents, and of other blood relations, add to its interest and profit? And what could equal, in thrilling interest and useful knowledge, short biographies of many or most of the individuals of remarkable families, in all their branches? What could equal, in value, sketches of the ancestors and relatives of the Franklin, Edwards, Henry, Webster, Clay, and other families, merely as a matter of knowledge? All facts are full of interest and instruction. Behold the almost boundless power exerted by Washingtonian biography over the public mind! Like a fire on the prairie, it swept all before it, simply because PERSONAL NARRATIVES compel admission into the human mind, where nothing else can penetrate. Such is the nature of mind. STORIES "tell the story." Other genealogical works record the NAMES of ancestors and descendants, but we require also to know WHAT THEY DID AND

WERE.

Now add SCIENCE to fact-illustrate general LAWS and great moral principles by these histories of individuals—and no reading, no species of knowledge, would compare with it in value and instruction. Besides, the MORAL of biography is of the very highest order. And, then, the combination of all these conditions of interest with those of HEREDITARY DESCENT, and their application to human improvement, would constitute the very climax of utility and value, which would be enhanced by the fact that all this anecdote, science, and moral relates to US AND OURS. Mankind have a sort of PASSION to know all about their ancestors and relatives.

"To secure all these most desirable ends by one instrumentality, it is proposed to establish a periodical which shall embrace short biographies of persons and families any way remarkable for any thing and every thing, and also of their ancestors and all collateral branches, as far as they can be traced, including the bearing of all these facts on transmission, especially as illustrating the various laws of combination, improvement, deterioration, etc., etc. The record of current marriages, births, and deaths, in a permanent form, for future reference, will, of course, be one of its leading features, so that it will be designed to be a NATIONAL record of family and individual statistics-confessedly a very great desideratum.

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Again; our nation is cosmopolitic. Families are "moving" and removing from all parts to all parts, by which all attempts at genealogical records are rendered abortive. This evil the Family Biographer will partially obviate, by containing tables which can be filled up, one by one branch and others by other branches-the compilation of which would give a vast amount of most useful and instructive genealogical statistics. This would also be putting this species of knowledge in a PERMANENT and tangible form for future reference.

The memories of our old people contain vast stores of most interesting and invaluable facts and anecdotes of this class, which, unless rescued from oblivion, must die with them. Such rescue this work will greatly promote, by furnishing a place, and also facilities, for such record, and by keeping this subject perpetually before the people.

"There is also required a central depot-a national focus-to which all can communicate, and from which all can obtain, a knowledge of their respective ancestors and descendants, and in which can be recorded that vast range of hereditary facts perpetually transpiring all over the world. Nor will mothers in their maternal capacity be overlooked, or directions touching the choice of suitable parental partners be omitted. In short, this most important subject is designed to be treated so as to be of great PRACTICAL advantage to the entire community."

P. S.—If time can be spared, and proper assistance obtained, the above plan, somewhat improved, may hereafter be taken up and carried out by the Author.

N. B.--A kindred periodical, entitled the Genealogical Register, has just appeared in Boston. We heartily commend it to public patronage.