tling on the floor, or lies sleeping in the cradle, and every thing seems preparing to welcome the happiest of husbands, and the best of fathers, when he shall come from his toil to enjoy the sweets of his little paradise. This is the true domestic pleasure. Health, contentment, love, abundance, and bright prospects, are all here. But it has become a prevalent sentiment that a man must acquire his fortune before he marries, that the wife must have no sympathy nor share with him in the pursuit of it, in which most of the pleasure truly consists; and the young married people must set out with as large and expensive an establishment as is becoming to those who have been wedded for twenty years. This is very unhappy; it fills the community with bachelors, who are waiting to make their fortunes, endangering virtue and promoting vice; it destroys the true economy and design of the domestic institution, and inefficiency among females, who are expecting to be taken up by fortune and passively sustained, without any care or concern on their part; and thus many a wife becomes, as a gentleman once remarked, not a "help-mate," but a "help-eat."

The Creator found that it was not good for man to be alone. Therefore he made woman to be a "helpmeet for him." And for many ages history has shown that "the permanent union of one man with one woman establishes a relation of affections and interests which can in no other way be made to exist between two human beings." To establish this relation was one of the great designs of God in giving the rite to man; and by establishing this relation, marriage becomes to him

an aid in the stern conflict of life. This it is in a theoretical point of view. This, too, it has often proved in practical life. Many a man has risen from obscurity to fame, who, in the days of his triumphant victory, has freely and gratefully acknowledged, that to the sympa thy and encouragement of his wife, during the long and weary years of toil, he owed very much of his achieved success.

But while young men say they cannot marry because the girls of this generation are too extravagant, the fault by no means is altogether with the girls. In the first place, young men as a general thing, admire the elegant costumes in which many ladies appear, and do not hesitate to express their admiration to those who are more plainly dressed. And what is the natural effect of this? In the second place many young men are too proud themselves to commence their married life in a quiet, economical way. They are not willing to marry until they have money enough to continue all their own private luxuries, and also support a wife in style. The difficulty is not altogether on either side; but if both men and women would be true to the best feelings of their hearts, and careless about what the world would say, pure and happy and noble homes would be more abundant. This state of affairs is very unfortunate for both parties. It leaves woman without a home and without protection or support. Woman needs the strength and courage of man, and he needs her cheerfulness, her sympathy, her consolation. Our papers tell us, us, that in a single New England city, there are nearly thirty thousand young men, already engaged,

who are putting off marriage until they can make enough to support their wives. So it is throughout the country. Young men need the restraining and elevating influences of home. But as it is now the man must commence business alone, fight his own battles without sympathy or consolation, win, if possible, by years of arduous toil, a competence; and when the conflict is over, the toil is past and the victory is won, then he can have a wife and a home. A man to succeed well in life needs the influence of a pure-minded woman, and her sympathy to sweeten the cup of life.

Advantage of Matrimony.

MARRIAGE has in it less of beauty, but more of safety than the single life; it hath no more ease, but less danger; it is more merry and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows and fuller of joys; it lies under more bur dens, but it is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves king. doms, and fills cities and chures, and heaven itself. Celibacy, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers honey from every flower, and labors, and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with.

delicacies, and obeys its king, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interests of mankind, and is that state of good to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.

If you are for pleasure, marry; if you prize rosy health, marry. A good wife is heaven's last best gift to man; his angel of mercy; minister of minister of graces innumerable; his gem of many virtues; his casket of jewels. Her voice his sweetest music; her smiles his brightest days; her kiss the guardian of innocence; her arms the pale of his safety, the balm of his health, the balsam of his life; her industry his surest wealth; her economy his safest steward; her lips his faithful counselor; her bosom the softest pillow of his cares; and her prayers the ablest advocates of heaven's blessings on his head.

Woman's influence is the sheet anchor of society; and this influence is due not exclusively to the fascina. tion of her charms, but chiefly to the strength, uniformity, and consistency of her virtues, maintained under so many sacrifices, and with so much fortitude and heroism. Without these endowments and quali fications, external attractions are nothing; but with them, their power is irresistible.

Beauty and virtue are the crowning attributes be stowed by nature upon woman, and the bounty of heaven more than compensates for the injustice of man. Sometimes we hear both sexes repine at their change, relate the happiness of their earlier years, blame the folly and rashness of their own choice, and warn those whom they see coming into the world against the same precipitance and infatuation. But it is to be remen

T

bered that the days which they so much wish to call back, are the days not only of celibacy but of youth, the days of novelty and improvement, of ardor and of hope, of health and vigor of body, of gayety and lightness of heart. It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful; and we are afraid that whether married or unmarried, we shall find the vesture of terrestrial existence more heavy and cumbrous the longer it is worn.

Once for all, there is no misery so distressiul as the desperate agony of trying to keep young when one can't. We know an old bachelor who has attempted it. His affectation of youth, like all affectations, is a melancholy failure. He is a rapid young man of fifty. He plies innocent young ladies with the pretty compliments and soft nothings in vogue when he was a spooney youth of twenty. The fashion of talking to young ladies has changed within thirty years, you know, and this aged boy's soft nothings seem more out of date than a two-year-old bonnet. They make you think, somehow, of that time-honored frog-story, wherein is set forth the discovery of galvanic electricity. When you see his old-fashioned young antics-his galvanic gallantry, so to speak, and hear the speeches he makes to girls in their teens, when he ought to be talking to them like a father-you involuntarily call him an old idiot, and long to remind him of that quaint rebuke of grand old John: "Thou talkest like one upon whose head the sheil is to this very day." That is how he seems. He is old enough to have been almost fullfledged before you were born, and here he is trying to