146 THE MATRIMONIAL GARDEN. 



mischief to its neighbour. While unbridled lusts, like 

 swarms of noisome insects, taint each rising thought, and 

 render "every imagination of the heart only evil continu- 

 ally'?" Such are the usual products of unrestrained nature ! 

 Such the furniture of the uncultivated mind ! 



By all means, then, pay due attention to culture. By 

 suitable discipline, clear the soil ; by careful instruction, 

 implant the seeds of virtue. By skill and vigilance, prune 

 the unprofitable and over-luxuriant branches : — " direct the 

 young idea how to shoot," — the wayward passions how to 

 move. The mature man will then become the chief orna- 

 ment of the garden. Around him charity will breathe her 

 sweets, and in his branches hope expand her blossoms. 

 In him the personal virtues will display their graces, and the 

 social ones their fruit— the sentiments become generous, 

 the carriage endearing, the life useful, and the end happy 

 and peaceful. 



THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE. 



"Marriage is to a woman at once the happ est and the saddest event of heF 

 life ; it is the promise of future bliss rai-ed on the death of all present enjoy- 

 ment. She quits her home, her parents, her companions, her occupations, 

 her amusements, every thing on which she has hitherto depended lor com- 

 fort, for affection, for kindness, for pleasure. The parents by whose advice 

 she has been guided, the sister to whom she has dared impart every embryo 

 thought and feeling, the brother who has played with her, by turns the 

 counsellor and the counselled, and the younger children to whom she has 

 hitherto been the mother and the playmate, ail are to be forsaken at one fell 

 stroke ; every former tie is loosened, the spring of every hope and action is 

 to be changed: and yet she flies with joy into the untrodden path before 

 her; buoyed uo with the confidence of requited love, she bids a fond and 

 crateful adieu to the life that is past, and turns with excited hopes and joy- 

 ous anticipation of the happiness to come. Then wo to him who can blight 

 such fair hopes— who can coward-like break the illusions that have won 

 her and destroy the confidence which love had inspired. Wo to him who 

 has' too early withdrawn the tender plant from the props and stays of mo- 

 ral discipline in which she has been nurtured, and yet make no effort to 

 supply their place ; for on him be the responsibility of her errors — on him 

 who has first taught her, by his example, to grow careless of her duty, and 

 then exposed her with a weakened spirit and unsatisfied heart, to the wide 

 storms and the wily temptations of a vicious world." 



