"Marriage," says Jeremy Taylor, "is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms and fills cities and churches and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors, and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world." To carry out the argument and show the necessity of this relation to due provision for children, to the peace and purity of society at large, would but lead us into common-places that can as well be spared. Better pass on and speak of the nature and duties of the relation in question. * * * * * It differs from the other relations that we have thus far considered, first of all in the fact, that it is elective or voluntary. The tie is one of choice, not of blood, and of course this fact of itself speaks to reason and conscience to stir themselves in the choice, instead of leaving it to a giddy eye or a silly ear. The relation, moreover, is exclusive, and in this fact it is distinguished from all ties of blood and all other ties of choice. Again it is entire--extending to all the interests of human life. Elective, exclusive, entire, marriage is thus the most momentous of human relations. Decalogue, Gospel, Providence, experience, all declare it such, and rest upon an act of choice the only obligation that brooks no rival and allows no limitation. In accordance with the tenderness and dignity of the relation, the ruling sentiment and correspondent duties must be. Of the sentiment, more than filial or parental love, more than brotherhood, for which friendship is an inadequate name, and which at once fascinates by natural affinities and binds with the sacredness of religion, I have no elaborate analysis to give. We escape at once the peril of maudlin sentimentality and metaphysical abstraction, by speaking of the sentiment in the practical fruits, which best show its nature. * * * * *