How different an aspect would the world in a very short time present if that offspring of pride and prejudice, the unjust law of primogeniture, were abolished. The slaves of circumstances, whether men or women, would thus, without spoliation or revolution, be gradually emancipated, and the worship of wealth, that most universal and degrading of all idolatries, be put down. The standard of ostentation would be lowered, tis true; but the sum of human felicity would be increased, not only in a natural proportion, but still more through the medium of that ideal estimate which now poisons the very sources of peace. For then, not only would the number possessed of comfortable independence be much greater, but all those so blessed would learn (their understandings being no longer warped by invidious comparisons) to know themselves rich and feel themselves happy. Imagine then pride, prejudice, and famine thus banished from the world. Fancy this amended state of things to have existed for some centuries, and the happy generation then in being looking back on the records of our times. Would they believe what they read to be a grave statement of facts? Certainly not! On the contrary, they would be inclined to suppose the whole not only a work of fiction, but the conception of a madman's mind; so extravagant, so far removed from nature and probability would every action appear, so insufficient every motive, the sacrifices of realties to phantoms so egregiously inordinate, so hyperbolically absurd, that the feelings and adventures of personages so unlike themselves would find no fellowship with their sympathies. As well might we be expected to feel pious awe when we read of the gross idolatries of the ancient sage or modern savage. When, however, we look back on obsolete absurdities, or abroad on foreign follies, and find that when objects are removed from the artificial atmosphere of interests and habits we can discern them with distinctness, it seems not unreasonable to hope, that our mental vision is in itself perfect, and that therefore when the great luminary truth, which is gradually climbing the intellectual horizon, shall have arrived at its meridian, and dissipated the mists of prejudice, we shall behold with equal distinctness those objects, which lying in and around our homes and our times more intimately concern our happiness. Were all the world governed by rational, sufficient, and consistent motives, how few, comparatively speaking, would be the ills of life!