MARRIAGE.

"If that thy bent of love be honorable,

Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
And all my fortunes at thy feet I'll lay,

And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world."
-ROMEO AND JULIET.

"Never wedding, ever wooing,
Still a love-lorn heart pursuing,
Read you not the wrong you're doing
In my cheek's pale hue?

All my life with sorrow strewing-
Wed, or cease to woo."

-THOS. CAMPBELL.

OMPARING life to a passage o'er a restless flood, marriage is like a suspension-bridge which spans the torrent; and over this structure the long train of humanity has ever walked with joyful or weary feet. other words, marriage is a "Bitter-Sweet," with the sweet predominating, if the proper conditions are observed. Longfellow is entirely right

when he says:

"As the cord unto the bow is,

So is woman unto the man:

Useless each without the other."

In

In childhood days, the young girls at school were wont to form a circle and go round and round repeating in chorus the well-worn lines,

"The happiest life that ever was led,

Is always to court, and never to wed;"

and judging from the actions of many children of a larger growth now, the same sentiment is quite extensively cherished. There is many a pert young Miss (and now and then a pert old one, also) who declares with a species of bitter disdain that

state.

"The hour of marriage ends the female reign,

And we give all we have to buy a chain;

Hire men to be our lords, who were our slaves,
And bribe our lovers to be perjured knaves.”

But these are among that large and growing number of female butterflies who had rather continue to bask in a lover's smiles and attentions, than assume the responsibilities and cares of a permanent married These stoutly aver that "she that takes the best of husbands, puts on a golden fetter; for husbands are like painted fruit which promise much, but still deceive us when we come to try them." And then, growing bolder with outspoken contempt, they sometimes loudly proclaim that

"Wedlock's a saucy, sad, familiar state,
Where folks are very apt to scold and hate;
While love, kept at a distance, is divine,
Obliging, and says everything that's fine."

But, on the other hand, there are many more true

and noble women who would echo the words of Mrs. Hemans when she writes thus of her husband:

"I bless thee for the noble hear

The tender and the true,

Where mine hath found the happiest rest

That e'er fond woman's knew:

I bless thee, faithful friend and guide,
For my own, my treasured share
In all the secrets of thy soul,

Thy sorrow and thy care.

"I bless thee for kind looks and words
Showered on my path like dew;
For all the love in those deep eyes,

A gladness ever new!

For the voice which ne'er to mine replied

But in kindly tones of cheer;

For every spring of happiness
My soul hath tasted here."

Or again, with another they would acknowledge that "the tying of two in wedlock is as the tuning of two lutes in one key; one cannot be delighted, but the other rejoiceth." They would joyfully declare that "marriage, rightly understood, gives to the tender and the good, a paradise below."

The hour when a young couple stand up before the altar and take upon themselves vows and promises which can end, properly and lawfully, only with the life of one of the parties, is as solemn as it is interesting. Both are inexperienced in the ways of the world, and both are ignorant of the thousand trials and perplexities of the life before them, and yet both are so confiding and trustful, and so full of

hope, anticipation, and joy, that it seems to them, in their blindness, that nothing can ever shake their settled bliss. But what makes the father and mother and intimate friends often weep at these wedding festivals? Mrs. Hemans says,

"Holy and pure are the drops that fall

When the young bride goes from the father's hall,

For she goes unto love untried and new,

And parts from love which hath aye been true."

What makes the aged spectators weep ? It is doubtless mingled recollection and anticipatory foreboding. It is the knowledge of future contingencies and possibilities which has been gained perchance, by bitter experience. The old people know, if the young couple do not, that "honeymoons" are generally short-lived, and after the calm frequently

comes a storm.

It is probably true that the majority of young people enter upon the married state with altogether too high and extravagant notions about what they are to experience and enjoy in this new sphere of life. As love is largely ideal in its nature, the imagination often carries away captive all the more solid and sober faculties of the mind, and feeds the two smitten souls with a sweet compound of fancies and phantoms, "cooked to a turn, and nicely seasoned." But even this temporary delusion is one of the kindly provisions of nature, and should always be accounted such.

Light causes often move dissensions between hearts that love. When jealousy comes in, love usually goes

out.

There is not a single redeeming side or feature

to this fell passion of human nature, for its root is a morbid and exacting self-love, rather than love for the other, as is sometimes alleged, by way of its justification. Therefore, let every married couple avoid it as they would the coming of yellow fever, or the devil. After this passion is once aroused, the bright altarflame which once leaped from heart to eyes, and spread itself like the crimson glow of sunrise all over the countenance, dies down, and burns lower and lower until there is left but the chilled and cheerless cinders of an extinct funeral pyre. The heart is dead and cold, or changed to an instrument of self-torture and intense hate. Then life becomes an intolerable burden, to be shaken off at the first convenient opportunity through suicide, or is converted into a suppressed volcano whose internal fury and wrath are liable at any time to burst forth in flames of cruelty, desertion, or murder.

Yet, after all this, more mutual love and more marriages are among the great wants of our time. The darkest side of our present social life lies in the direction of this want. Young men and maidens are not marrying as fast as is good and healthful for public morality and social virtue. Pure, happy, industrious homes constitute the nucleus of both church and state, and a peaceful, united pair is the only normal divinely-established and perfectly rounded unit of humanity, and the only true center and source of all that makes life valuable, or earth blessed.

As good Bishop Taylor says: "If you are for pleasure, marry; if you prize rosy health, marry. A good wife is Heaven's last and best gift to man, his angel of mercy. Her voice is his sweetest music;