Like many other classical expressions, it has passed into common use, and become a mere conventional phraseology. This is the case with much of our poetical and rhetorical dialect. Metaphors, which, in their early usage, presented the most vivid conceptions, and were connected with the profoundest significance, have passed away into dead formulas. They keep the flow of the rhythm, they produce a graceful effect in rounding a period, they have about them a faint odor of classicality, but the life has long since departed. As far as any impressive meaning is concerned, a blank space would have answered almost as well. The "altar of Hymen," the "nuptial torch," suggest either nothing at all, or a cold civil engagement, with no higher sanctions than a justice's register, or the business-like dispatch of what, in many cases, is a most unpoetical, as well as a most secular transaction. The nuptial torch was significant of marriage, as the divinely appointed means through which the lamp of life is sent down from generation to generation. It was the symbol of the true vitality of the race, as preserved in the single streams of the "isolated household," instead of being utterly lost in the universal conflagration of unregulated passion. It was the kindling of a new fire from the ever-burning hearth of Vesta. It was the institution of a new domestic altar. The torch was carried by the mother in procession before the daughter, or the daughter-in-law, and then given to the latter to perform the same office, with the same charge, to children, and children's children, down through all succeeding generations. Such a custom, and such a symbol, never could have originated where polygamy prevailed, nor have been ever preserved in sympathy with such a perversion of the primitive idea. Neither could it maintain itself where marriage is mainly regarded as a civil contract, having no other sanction for its commencement, and, of course, no other for its dissolution, than the consent of the parties. Have we not reason to suppose that some such conception is already gaining ground among us. It would seem to come from that wretched individualism, the source of so many social errors, which would regard marriage as a transaction for the convenience of the parties, and subject to their spontaneity, rather than in reference to society or the race. The feeling which lends its aid to such a sophism, is promoted by the prevailing philosophy in respect to what are called "woman's rights." We allude not now to its more extravagant forms, but to that less offensive, and more plausible influence, which, in the name of humanity and of protection to the defenseless, is in danger of sapping the foundation of a most vital institution. We can not be too zealous in guarding the person or property of the wife against the intemperate or improvident husband; but it should be done, and it can be done, without marring that sacred oneness which is the vitality of the domestic commonwealth.