The attraction of woman for man is her invisible presage of motherhood. This it is which lends the nameless charm to the maiden and the sacred dignity to the matron. Around her, centre all those sentiments which constitute the Home, the family, and the parental affections. These find their proper expression in Marriage. The history of the institution of marriage is a curious narrative. Every conceivable relation of the sexes has been established by one community or another, and sanctioned by the moral sense of the time and place. There have been hordes where the relations have been communal or miscellaneous; others, where a man had many wives; others, as in Thibet to-day, where the woman would have many husbands; sometimes the woman selects the man, at others the man the woman, and elsewhere the marriage is arranged by third parties; in some, marriage is indissoluble, in others, more or less easily annulled; while in certain religious societies in our own country the method of selective and temporary unions has been practiced. The result of all these experiments has been to show that the happiness of both parties is best consulted by strictly monogamous or pairing marriages, where each exerts a certain amount but not entire freedom of selection, and where the lien can be canceled when it proves clearly detrimental to the felicity of either. Very few words will be necessary to defend the first of these three conditions. Under whatever form we find polygamy, whether legalized, as in Mohammedan countries, or sanctioned by religion, as among the Mormons, or winked at by usage, as in mistress-keeping, it inevitably results in the degradation of the woman and her subjection to the dominion of lower impulses. To every one who believes that her happiness demands equal attention to that of the man, all schemes of polygamy stand condemned. The second condition I have stated will need more defense. Especially in our country is it unpopular to oppose the course of love. “Let me not,” exclaims the great dramatist, “to the marriage of true minds admit impediment.” Yet all will admit certain impediments. The laws of many States prohibit the marriage of near of kin, of first cousins, and of uncles with nieces, although in Germany unions of the latter class are very common. Immature age does legally, and should always, act as a bar to marriage. At what period of life marriage is likely to prove most happy is a curious question, which has never been properly studied. The physiologist, basing his opinion on grounds of his science, would say that the woman should be between twenty and thirty, and the man between twenty-five and thirty-five. Dr. Johnson, regarding the question from another point of view, made the wise observation,――“Those who marry late are best pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their partners.”