EPOCHS OF LIFE. 547 



and mental imperfections of the female, may be permitted to turn with 

 delight from the dry details of statistics and anatomy to the family and 

 social relations, for it is therein that her beautiful qualities shine forth. 

 At the close of a long life, checkered with pleasures and misfortunes, 

 how often does the aged man with emotion confess that, though all the 

 ephemeral acquaintances and attachments of his career have ended in dis- 

 appointment and alienation, the wife of his youth is still his friend. In 

 a world from which every thing else seems to be passing away, her affec- 

 tion alone is unchanged ; true to him in sickness as in health, in misfor- 

 tune as in prosperity, true in the hour of death. When the schemes that 

 occupied his active years have vanished, or, if realized, are now no more 

 to him than vanities which hardly fasten his thoughts ; when, in the 

 feeble extremity of age, every thing is a burden to him, and the pass- 

 ing excitements of others can not even arouse his attention, the echo of 

 those prayers is still heard which his unskillful tongue first learned at his 

 mother's knee. The stern, the avaricious, the hard-hearted, the intellect- 

 ual, all are equally brought to confess who was their first and who is their 

 last true friend. 



The necessities of society have led to the establishment of artificial 

 epochs in the life of man. In most countries, the first recog- Artificial 

 nized movements of the foetus are taken as the period from e P chs of life - 

 which independent life begins, and the twenty-first year is fixed as the 

 time of maturity. These arbitrary dates answer the purpose very well, 

 but they have not that physiological significance which is commonly sup- 

 posed, for neither of them coincides with any great change in the mode 

 of life. Of the metamorphoses through which we pass, the final one, oc- 

 curring at puberty, which separates the merely vegetative from the re- 

 productive period of life, is, under the circumstances of the case, with the 

 exception of the assumption of aerial respiration at birth, the only obvious 

 one. The change which then ensues is in no respect less marked than 

 the passage to the perfect or imago state by insects. Development sud- 

 denly takes on a new phase, and with the physical change correspond- 

 ingly occur changes in the psychical endowments modesty and woman- 

 ly sentiments in the one sex, courage, the perception of honor, and manly 

 qualities in the other, the capability of mutual love in both. Even among 

 animals under the same conditions, analogous results are presented, though 

 in a less refined way. 



The human species is no exception to the observation long ago made, 

 that the undue extension of the vegetative period of life into Encroachment 

 the reproductive is at the expense of the latter. In the same 

 manner that a tree overladen with foliage presents its flow- life. 

 ers scantily, so a love for the pleasures of the table and a predominating 

 epicurean turn is often the indication of incapability. 



