Price.] 3Qg [January. 



ruption become the rule, the state is lost : Rome would not have 

 fallen before the barbarians, if the Roman people had not first been 

 diminished and weakened by the loss of the virtues that sustain the 

 family. Their frequent and unscrupulous divorces and transfers by 

 new mnrriafres were more cruel and demoralizing than an authorized 

 and regulated Asiatic polygamy. 



The family constituted as we see it, is the most healthy and happy 

 arrangement, though susceptible of some improvement in the best, 

 and of great improvement in the many. There only is found a mu- 

 tual sympathy and support, many defences against the assailing evils 

 of life, to which separately its members would succumb. While 

 writing these pages I have received the Fourteenth Annual Report 

 of the Mission in the Insane Hospital of our city. The experienced, 

 faithful, and observant chaplain says, " We must remember that the 

 quiet comforts of home do much to keep in tune the harp of a thou- 

 sand strings. And this brings up the collateral thought that the di- 

 vine institute of the family builds a wall around the intellect as well 

 as the heart. The isolation of a homeless and unsettled life has 

 always done much to develop morbid mental conditions. The brains 

 which yield are not generally those of the toilinfr heads of families; 

 the detached in society succumb the soonest. We think the tables 

 of our institutions catalogue this result. Hence, whatever in our so- 

 cial habits inhibits the general prevalence of the matrimonial rehition, 

 adds to the harvest of alienated mind. A rational home culture will 

 soon depopulate our asylums; but when will this culture prevail 

 among us?" The Rev, Edward C. Jones, who thus speaks, then 

 adverts to the evil of a demand for wealth before the young will risk 

 settlement in life, instead of being mutually willing to live simply, 

 exertively, and happily, as the chief cause of discouragement of 

 marriages. 



It is in sickness and sorrow, " when pain and anguish wring the 

 brow," that the home becomes indispensable to human cure and 

 preservation. One who writes forcibly from observation, and with 

 a humane feeling, though too often disposed to raise a veil that 

 modesty should forbid, says truly, "Nature has bound up life within 

 a triple and absolute tie. Man, woman, child : separately they are 

 sure to perish, and are only saved together." (Michelet.) And 

 many and sad are the proofs he gives in his own country, France; 

 that gayest and saddest country on earth ; whose celibacy, and mar- 

 riage with its sacred pledges unobserved, are alike productive of 

 immensity of misery. Paris is at once the centre of the world's 



