Price.] 2]^ 2 [January. 



has formed citizens ; it has extended the views of men to the future, 

 through affection for the rising generation ; it has multiplied social 

 sympathies. To perceive all its benefits, it is only necessary to ima- 

 gine what men would be without the institution." 



The Baron William Von Humboldt, formerly Privy Councillor of 

 State and Minister of Worship and Public Instruction in Prussia, in 

 his treatise on "The Sphere and Duties of Government," speaks 

 upon the subject in language more closely bordering on eulogy, and 

 ascribes to woman a higher ideal of human excellence, both in her 

 conception of it, and in her practical fulfilment of that conception. 

 He advises against governmental interference in the formation and 

 regulation of a relation so delicate as that of matrimony, which must 

 rest, to be successful of happiness, on mutual inclinations; though 

 the government be most deeply interested in population, and the 

 early training of youth. He says, "After careful observation, it has 

 been found that the uninterrupted union of one man with one woman 

 is most conducive to population ; and it is likewise undeniable that 

 no other union springs from true, natural, harmonious love." He, 

 while disclaiming the policy of the state's interference by law that 

 commands, to mould the arrangements that belong to nature's myste- 

 rious elective affinities and to the sacred precinct of the family, bears 

 his testimony to the fact, that " experience frequently convinces us 

 that just where law has imposed no fetters, morality most surely 

 binds." And as it is wise for the law to forbear the exercise of its 

 coercive power, so long as inclination and a sense of duty rule to the 

 end the law most desires, so the husband, with whom is the final 

 family authority, should forbear to interfere so long as the wife and 

 mother are, with adequate intelligence, performing the functions of 

 domestic rule, with a wiser government of blended authority and 

 affection than belong to his sterner nature. Of woman's fitness for 

 this high task he speaks in terms of glowing eulogy, surpassing those 

 I would think proper before this grave audience; for in her he be- 

 holds concentrated "each human excellence," " the whole treasure 

 of morality and order;" saying, with the poet, 



"Man strives for freedom, woman still for order." 



That "while the former strives earnestly to remove the external bar- 

 riers which oppose his development, woman's careful hand prescribes 

 that inner restraint, within whose limits alone the fulness of power 

 can refine itself to perfect issues ; and she defines the circle with more 

 delicate precision, in that every sense is more faithful to her simple 



