few words enchain forever every feeling and passion of their nature. It is absurd. No man can do so; and society, as though it had made a compact with the devil to make man commit more sins than his nature would otherwise prompt, says, ‘Now you are fairly in the trap, seek to get out, and we cast you off forever,—you and your helpless children.’ Man never was made to endure even such a yoke as unwise governments have sought to lay on him; how much more galling, then, must be that which seeks to bind the noblest feelings and affections of his nature, and makes him— ‘So, with one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.’ “That there is any necessity to insure, by any means, a woman’s happiness, is a proposition you do not seem to have entertained while writing your letter of May 24th; but perhaps we are supposed to be happy under all circumstances.” There is for man and woman on this earth one supreme happiness, one contenting fulfilment of destiny, whether there are more or not. It is a pure, calm, holy, and impassioned love, joining them in one life, filling both soul and body with a peaceful and rapturous harmony, glorifying the scenery of nature by its reflection, making the current of daily experience a stream of prophetic bliss, revealing to them authentic glimpses of God in each other, and opening eternity to their faith with mystic suggestions of worlds bygone and worlds to come, lives already led and forgotten and lives yet to be welcomed. This is the one absolute blessing, without whose appeasing and sufficing seal the human creature pines for he knows not what, and dies unsatisfied, no matter how much else is granted him. Any one to whom this divine fortune falls, and whose conscience, instead of wearing it proudly as a crown of glory in the sight of God, shrinks with it guiltily before the sight of men, is a contemptible coward, unworthy of the boon, and sure to forfeit it. As the most original thinker, the boldest diver into the mysteries of our nature, America has produced, expresses it,— “The sense of the world is short, Long and various the report, To love and be beloved. Men and gods have not outlearned it, And how oft soe’er they’ve turned it, ’Tis not to be improved.”