Setting aside the selfishness and unmanliness of the vice, it is important that the wearer of the cap and bells should know the consequences of abusing a given function by such a means of gratification. There is no mental passion, or physical exertion, that produces such temporary nervous prostration as the completion of the act of sexual intercourse; and it therefore can be easily conceived how debilitating must be the immoderate indulgence of the practice. Health consists in a due performance of all the functions of the organs of the body, and an undue exercise of them is sure to lead to a disturbance of the economy. In ordinary sexual commerce, particular phenomena ensue, the circulation is powerfully roused, the heart thumps violently, the blood is driven to the brain, and great mental exaltation is induced, and instances have been known of death suddenly crushing the transport. The too frequent repetition of such excitement can not fail to wear out, and disease the overwrought organs, the heart and brain particularly, upon the healthy condition of which the health of the entire frame rests; and hence the diseases of the libertine are usually consumption, physical weakness, and mental imbecility, all the result of disordered circulation and impaired nervous power. If, therefore, such consequences follow a waste of the allotted privileges of man, how much more severe must they be that arise from nervous exhaustion, that which transpires from an absolute stretch of an already overwrought imagination, from, in fact, ideal pleasures, instead of those springing from the instinctive stimulus imparted by the presence of, and cohabitation with, woman. I have elsewhere treated upon the sad and withering effects of self-indulgence in a hygæan point of view. My object here is to portray the consequences of the like, and the more lawful, intemperance of sexual cohabitation in a domestic light, in how far it is destructive to the health and happiness of others, than the party addressed—the partner of our worldly anxieties, and the offspring that issue from our union. How striking is the change of _appearance_ only, much less the positive bodily condition of married persons of both sexes, within one or two years of their union, especially if the match be a youthful one. Let any one, even with a limited acquaintance, recollect such of his former female associates, whom he knew when single, and mayhap may have indulged with in little modest pleasantries; let him recall the gay-lit countenance, the ruddy and prominent cheek, the sparkling and lively eye, the plump and well filled neck—in fact, let him but compare her then and now, and how disheartening the change; the same being may be recognised, but it is the same being only in mind, and not in person. There are exceptions, as I shall presently show, but this is the too frequent portraiture of those who embark in precocious hymeneal contracts, and restrain not the marital privileges.