test the character of a youth of whom I wish to entertain hope, by this criterion. If he can nobly resist his propensities, if he can act from reason against his inclinations, if he can trample indolence under foot, if he can always make the effort to show the intellectual in the ascendant over the animal being, I note him as one, who will be worthy of eminence, whether he attain it or not. In a word, there is something of dignity and intellectual grandeur in the aspect of the young, who live in obedience to the organic and moral laws, which commands at once that undefined, and almost unconscious estimation and respect, which all minds involuntarily pay to true greatness. Such was the image of the poet, when he delineated the angel _severe in youthful beauty_; and such that of the Mantuan, when he compares Neptune rebuking and hushing the winds, to a venerable man, allaying by his words of peace, the uproar of an infuriated populace. Were I to enter into details of your obligations to understand and obey these laws, as they relate to the various periods, pursuits and duties of life, I should offer you a volume, instead of an outline, which, from the examples given, your own thoughts can easily fill out. But that I may not leave these momentous duties wholly untouched, I shall dwell a moment on their bearing upon a most important epoch of life, one which, perhaps more than any other, gives the color to future years either of happiness or misery. When the young reach that period, when nature invokes them to assume the obligations of connubial life, this knowledge and conformity will cause them to pause, and reflect on what is before them, and will interdict them from following the inconsiderate throng, in entering into that decisive condition, consulting no other lights, than a morbid fancy, those impulses which are common to all other animals, or sordid calculations of interest. They are well apprized, that the declamations of satire, and the bitter and common jest of all civilized people, upon wedded life, have but too much foundation in truth. They perceive at a glance, that those who with such views take on them the obligations of the conjugal state have no right to hope anything better than satiety, ill-humor, monotonous disgust, and the insupportable imprisonment of two persons, in intimate and indissoluble partnership, who find weariness and penance in being together, who are reminded, at once by the void in their hearts, and their mutual inability to fill it, that they must not only endure the pain of being chained together, but feel, that they are thus barred from a happier union, partly by shame, partly by public opinion, and, more than all, by the obstacles, wisely thrown by all civilized nations in the way of obtaining divorce. There can be no doubt, that the common views of the universal unhappiness of the wedded state in all Christian countries are the result of gross exaggeration. Making all