nothing harrows up all the animal passions equally with either matrimonial disagreement, or unrequited love. In the very nature of things, marriage increases the action of all the faculties for good or evil-happy wedlock, for good; unhappy, for evil. What, equally wi.h blighted affection or matrimonial discord, will keep Combativeness in so perpetual a foam of fretfulness and anger? It will make almost any, woman, however good her disposition by nature, as cross and hateful as xantippe-an angel, a tartar. It animalizes and sensualizes the whole being, body and soul together. Steels them against all goodness and greatness. More fatal still: It engenders that lost, reckless, don't-care state of mind which blasts ambition, cripples effort, quenches the spirit of elevation and aspiration shrinks from sight and hearing, and breeds a desire to die!

But to see the full force of this subject, we must bear in mind—what few know or heed-the power of the affections over the entire mental and physical being. Reciprocated love infuses new life into both soul and body, increases appetite, digestion, muscular elasticity, power and disposition to labor moral purity and intellectual capability and desire, and augments every power and function of life. But disappointed love weakens muscular energy, exchanges the sprightly step for the heavy drag, enfeebles digestion, supplants the keen appetite for a loathing of its wonted food, diminishes that fullness of respiration which reciprocated love promotes, renders the looks dispirited, careworn, perhaps haggard, as though some dire calamity had befallen them; unstrings the nerves, fevers the brain, dissipates the mind, renders desire turgid, drives sleep from the pillow, or fatigues by dreams of evil, irritates the propensities, plants disease in body and mind, and bears its unhappy victim down into a premature grave! See that loved maiden, all life, and health, and happiness. Her eyes sparkling with joy. Her step graceful and elastic. Her ful check glowing with health and beauty. Her whole nature

"Fowler on Matrimony," pp. 25 to 35.

overflowing with happiness. But behold her now! Her afFections withered by disappointment! Her fondest hopes forever blasted! She vacates her seat at table. She becomes pale and languid. She "drags her slow length along." She is sedate, subdued, and broken-hearted. She rolls restlessly on her fevered pillow. She pines in mind and sickens in body. She becomes incurable · the best medical aid having lost its wonted power. She inally sinks into a premature grave from a broken heart! The welcome grave alone can assuage her grief. Young women die by thousands, ostensibly of consumptions, fevers, nervous affections, and female complaints. but caused in fact by blighted love-that most prolific parent of these and other forms of disease. As well bury them alive as blast their love, because the latter will soon kill them by inches. Well is it called a broken heart, because it is a matter of life and death, to both body and soul. observation disclose what words can so sinking and blighting in every corner and crevice of the soul, tha' palsy of the whole being, occasioned by both unrequited love and unhappy wedlock !*

Let experience and poorly express-that

.

Look again. Behold that weeping mother, just bereaved of a darling child. She is now healthy. But anon, she becomes pale and wastes away with grief. She, too, becomes an

*The fact is a little remarkable, that most of those who are disappointed in love, or live unhappily with their consort, care little about living, or else desire to die. Now, it is a fact that desiring to die tends to induce death. Let a person indulge this sorrowfu1 feeling, and it preys upon life with incalculable rapidity. Let such be entreated not to throw themselves away by indulging this deathdesiring feeling. Banish both this feeling and its cause. Engage in something that shall call off and divert your minds. Don't allow it to prey upon you. Shake off the thoughts of it. Pouring thus melancholy over it, does not restore affection's mate, but unfits you for the joys a d the duties of life. Above all, locate your affections or another object as soon as you can conveniently find one suitable. This is the very best antidote in the world-NATURE' ntidote.

invalid, and sickens, and dies, solely in consequence of the in fluence of reversed affection on health. Note yonder mourn ing widow. If she shakes off her grief, she will survive the shock. But if it continues to prey upon her, it impairs digestion and disturbs the sleep; and these great vital functions impaired, life itself is enfeebled or else destroyed. The loss of the deceased is but a part of this dire calamity. The grief of surviving friends, if intense and protracted, throws them alse into a decline, and then into their graves. How many females, in particular will find the cause of their disease in the loss of a dearly beloved child or friend! Deliver me, if from no other affliction, at least from this most dire of all calamities, the death of children and dear friends. Let my friends die of age, and in this fulfilment of nature's ordinance, not subject me tc that fainting of body and sinking of soul which palsies life, invites disease, and hastens death.* The uniform and the neces sary consequence of disturbed affection in all its forms, is injured health, deteriorated intellect, depreciated moral feeling, and increased and depraved propensity.

* Allow, bereaved parents and friends, this important advice. BANISH YOUr grief. It does the dead no good. It does you incalculable injury. It both shortens life and renders it miserable by inviting disease. Then why indulge it?" But it weans us from the world, and prepares for heaven." Does enjoyment in this life, that is, obeying its laws, unfit you for heaven? Do earth and heaven conflict? Has not our Heavenly Father beautifully HARMONIZED the two? And is not the doctrine of their conflict a virtual IMPEACHMENT of either His wisdom or goodness? Rather, of his who advocates this relic of heathenism, that our affliction ap peases his wrath and ensures his favor. The best possible prepa ration for another life is to obey the laws of this, which also makes us happy here. To make ourselves happy here, is to prepare for a hereafter, and whatever renders us unhappy here, as does grief for friends, both breaks the laws of earth, and unfits for heaven. We do not need to wean ourselves from earth, but only to seek how most effectually to enjoy and attach ourselves o it.

CONSEQUENCES OF DISAPPOINTED LOVE.

17

Once more. Disappointed love and unhappy wedlock are almost certain to derange the nervous system. Nothing more painfully excites it, and painful excitement is prolific of disease. Few things take so thorough a hold of all the interests of life, as love, and hence its interruption proportionally pains, and thereby diseases (painful action always diseases) the whole nervous system, the brain especially. Now a diseased nervous systern necessarily and always diseases the propensities, and this, as already shown, depraves them. We need not digress to prove this point, but, taking it for granted, we see how and why disappointments in love render its subject peevish, cross, irritable, misanthropic, and even wicked. Namely, disappointed love irritates Amativeness, and therefore the organs of the body around it. Why not, since reciprocated love soothes passion and promotes moral feeling?

Besides, when love remains riveted, we feel that, be the whole world untrue and unworthy of confidence, our loved one is indeed a paragon of moral purity and trustworthiness. But, when that true and trusted friend proves untrue, and we al ways feel thus when disappointed, except by opposing circumstances, we feel that verily no trust can be reposed in manthat all are indeed traitors. This deteriorates our own consciences, by making us feel that we have been deeply wronged,* and this awakens Combativeness to resent it, perhaps Destructiveness to revenge it, and thus both rouses propensity, and deteriorates the moral tone.

Still more prolific of all these evil consequences, nervous disorder in particular, and destructive of good feeling, is discord between husbands and wives. Married life brings every e ement of both, not perfectly harmonized by love, into direct

If the idea that the conscience of him who SUFFERS the wrong is deteriorated thereby, should be new to any, it is, nevertheless, even so because the PAINFUL exercise of ANY faculty deteriorates it. Those painful feelings, therefore, consequent on knowing that we have been wRO GED, deteriorate our moral feelings equally with the compunctions fa guilty conscience.

collision, and excites a perpetual succession of heart-burnings, and mutual sense of having been injured. If husband and wife do not cordially love each other, they must hate, except that when they partly love and partly hate they are unable to live either together or apart, and thus rendered proportionally miserable in both. Discord, in the exact proportion in which it exists, kindles the sour, hating, hateful, animal in parents, and depreciates their moral feelings, and therefore transmits this moral depreciation and animal exaltation to offspring.

Besides, since love heightens the ardor of the parental embrace, and thereby improves offspring, the absence of the former renders the latter tame and insipid, and this enfeebles its product. Those disaffected companions whose conscientious scruples curb passion in other directions, may content themselves with this merely animal relief, but can never enjoy that spiritual intercommunion already shown to be so promotive of parental pleasure, and so indispensable to the mental endow. ment of offspring. They violate the laws of matrimony, and must suffer its righteous penalties.

But, as the person goes with the affections, mutual hatred, if carried far, not only annuls desire, as regards each other, but produces mutual disgust; and that even when this passion is strong. Pure-minded woman, again our umpire, will bear the witness as to her loathing and even utter abhorrence. She may make a virtue of necessity, and tolerate what she cannot avoid, but prefers death to this living purgatory! But to unveil the inner recesses of her soul, seems like sacrilege, and having thus effectually drawn attention to this point, we forbear to prosecute it farther.

The inference is conclusive, that those who do not cordially love each other should never reciprocate this hallowed repast of love, even though married by law; because, first, law cannot possibly justify what nature has unequivocally condemned by rendering thus repulsive; and secondly, between such, it can never be anything else than mere animal indulgence, the supposed absence of love being the consequent absence of those