the editor of the Fredericksburg News says, that, in the county in which he was raised, for twenty generations back certain families of wealth and respectability have intermarried, until there cannot be found in three or four of them a sound man or woman! One has sore eyes; another, scrofula; a third is an idiot; a fourth, blind; a fifth, bandy-legged; a sixth, with a head about the size of a turnip; with not one of the number exempt from physi cal defects of some kind or other."

The reason why such marriages are injurious to offspring is plainly indicated in previous chapters, showing the necessity of physical adaptation. If two persons of the same temperament are nearly alike electrically, how much more so are two individuals of the same blood; particularly, if of the same temperament also. I have no doubt that, in all cases in which the children of full cousins entirely escape mental or physical disease, their parents happen to be of opposite temperaments. At least, my observation sustains this hypothesis. I have seen brothers and sisters so entirely unlike in temperament, as to be less nearly related to each other, physically, than to many persons not at all consanguineous. Such cases are rare, but it is nevertheless true they do sometimes occur. This condition oftener exists between cousins. But even when cousins do entirely differ in temperament, there is one weighty reason why they should not intermarry, viz.: their inherited predispositions to disease are generally sim lar, in consequence of which the predisposed infirmity will almost assuredly be dweloped in the offspring. When there is no such predisposition, and they are of opposite temperament, the objection to their intermarriage is not, perhaps, well founded.

Combe says that "in Scotland, the practice of full cousins marrying is not uncommon; and you will meet with examples of healthy families born of such unions, and from these an argument is maintained against the existence of the natural law which we are considering." "But," continues the same writer, "it is only when the parents have both had excellent constitutions that the children do not attract attention by their imperfections. The first alliance against the natural law brings down the tone of the organs and functions, say one degree; the second, two degrees; and the third, three; and perseverance in transgression ends in glaring imperfections, or in extinction of the race. This is undeniable, and it proves the reality of the law."

Has it ever occurred to the mind of the reader, that a man may as well marry a half-sister as a full cousin? It seems so on investigation. Indeed, the fact that the same relationship in blood exists, has been demonstrated by the Rev. J. II. Noyes, in a recent interesting article in The Circula A son has fifty per cent. of his father's blood and fifty per cent. of l mother's blood; but his brother or sister has one hundred per cent. of precisely the same blood that cirulites in his own veins. When two brothert

marry and have children, each of the latter receive fifty per cent. of the family blood of their fathers, and therefore possess fifty per cent. of the same blood and fifty per cent. of diverse blood. Now, supposing a man has two wives, and children by each; is it not manifest that the children of each of these mothers have fifty per cent. of the father's blood and fifty per cent. of diverse blood? This fact seems self-evident, and being so, how, in point of consanguinity, do half-brothers and half-sisters differ in bloodrelationship from full cousins? and yet it is denounced incestuous for a halfbrother to sexually mate with a half-sister, and the world at this writing is in an uproar about a supposed case of this kind as recently revealed by a popular authoress. A great many believe that the charge is false, because the "crime" is so unnatural, and those who think the allegation may possibly be true, denounce the act as monstrous. Perhaps it would be well to expend some of this moral ammunition upon those who marry full cousins. Unless temperamental adaptation is remarkably perfect, it would at least be well for those contemplating such alliances, to reflect upon this sugges tion. And even when temperamental adaptation is favorable, each of the parties thereto have fifty per cent, of the same blood or the same percentage that exists in common between a half-brother and a half-sister, and a marriage between the parties last mentioned would not be tolerated in any community in Christendom.

"It is thought," says Dr. Elliotson, "that a cross within the same nation is always desirable, but that a cross between two nations begets offspring superior to either. The importance of crossing an inferior nation with a better, is shown by the great improvement of the Persians, who were originally ugly and clumsy, ill-made and rough-skinned, by intermixing with the Georgians and Circassians, the two most beautiful nations in the world."

"There is hardly a man of rank in Persia," says Lawrence, "who is not born of a Georgian or Circassian mother; and even the king himself is commonly sprung, on the female side, from one or the other of these countries." Herein we see the beneficial effects of crossing temperaments.

The superior enterprise and native intelligence of the people of the United States is mainly attributable to the fact that our population has ever been heterogeneous, and made up of materials contributed by every nation on the globe. We have a mixture of all sorts-French, English, German, Scotch, Irish, Russian, Turk, Chinese, and every other variety which the old world can furnish, together with contributions from South and Central America. These have been, and are, constantly amalgamating or crossing. America, consequently, is, as she ought to be, the most powerful and progressive nation in the whole world. And still her prospects of future greatness would be immeasurably enhanced, if intermarriage between relatives and like temperaments were prohibited by law. Put a stop

immigration, and allow consanguineous families and similar temperaments to intermarry, and national degeneracy would soon ensue.

Thus far, accidental crossing, arising from the presence and constant influx of foreigners, has given physical and mental vigor to our population; yet we have idiots, maniacs, cripples, consumptives, etc., who are, in a majority of instances, the production, directly or indirectly, of bad marriages. As a nation's greatness depends upon the character of her population, it is the duty of every government to bestow at least as much attention upon the improvement of her human stock, as agricultural societies expend upon the improvement of the breeds of their horses and cattle.

To have enterprising and intellectual men and women, we must have boys and girls who are well developed physically and mentally. To look for these without due regard to adaptation in marriage, is as foolish as to expect "the olive to grow on the craggy summit of Ben Nevis, or the pineapple to expand amid the glaciers of Grinderwalde." Parents are in great degree responsible for the physical infirmities and mental imperfections of their children. They are particularly so, when the natural law against the intermarriage of relatives has been violated. Once put in operation a discriminative system of granting marriage licenses, such as I have suggested, and the marrying of nieces, cousins, and other blood relatives, will be discontinued. except in cases where temperamental difference and freedom from inherited diseases render the union unprejudicial.

CHAPTER VII.

ESSAYS FOR MARRIED PEOPLE.

NDER this head, I desire to introduce a few essays of interest and use to those who have entered upon the duties and responsibilities of monogamic marriage. Having already presented a variety of matter of this character in preceding pages, little need to be added here. But there are some subjects occurring presently to my mind, which may be presented with possibly some profit to the reader.

In starting upon the new life which a man and woman enters at the moment they pledge themselves to mutual fidelity and love, no one thing is more necessary, than to start with, and maintain, entire confidence in each other, and to carefully watch and avoid every possible cause that may weaken or destroy it. It is poetically said that this man and this woman have become one, and however impossible this may be in a physical sense, it is not so in a moral or spiritual one. Nor can this oneness exist, unless the hearts and heads of both are opened to each other. No necromancer's game, of "Now you see it, and now you don't see it," can be safely played by the husband and wife. Every action, and every thought, should be frankly made known to each other. Many who have been for several years married, and now find that their hopes of happiness in matrimony have been irrevocably wrecked, will, with a little retrospective reflection on their conjugal voyage, find that the first snag they encountered, was an experience or a secret which they hoped to keep far enough below e surface, to prevent their family bark from striking it. Foundering by is cause, there is little hope of saving it.

If the husband have a thought, or perform an act, which he desires to conceal from his wife, that thought, or that action, is surely something he should, as he values his matrimonial happiness, confide to his wife. If the wife entertain a secret, or have an experience, which she "would not for the world tell her husband," that secret, or that experience is something which should be confided to the husband, if she would avoid a cause which commonly leads to disaster in matrimony. If, in any case, the confe

places him or herself in a disagreeable attitude to the other, the more strik. ing it is, so much more will its revelation strengthen the confidence of the latter in the integrity and intended fidelity of the former. On the other hand, every thing which is hidden or concealed by one, if never discovered by the other, is the entering wedge of confidence lost. For instance, if the husband allows himself to do something which he desires to keep secret from his wife, the very moment he presents himself in this attitude toward her, he begins to suspect his wife may have been guilty of something she is concealing from him. If the wife in any instance acts underhandedly, aud keeps from the knowledge of her husband something which she should not conceal, from that very moment she is liable to suspect him of duplicity toward her. Why? Because it is a peculiarity of the human mind to suspect it possible in another to do that which you will do yourself. You may do more than this, and suspect another of that which you would not be guilty of; but you will never, in any instance, do less than believe one may possibly be bad enough to do that which you know that you can do, and have done, yourself. Is this not according to your individual experience, and of your observations of human nature the world over? You must reply, Yes. Then, it is readily seen that the deception of one in the marriage union - causes a discord which threatens disaster to not only the guilty, but the innocent party.

When, however, deceptions are detected, in spite of attempted concealment, farewell to all hope of matrimonial concord and happiness. You might as well try to reconstruct a bursted bubble as to attempt to restore harmony and confidence here. And there is yet a worse condition, if possible. Those who have reached the point of mutual distrust, where the Bible is brought in, and the suspected party called to kneel upon it, or kiss the book, while affirming or denying in a matter in question, might as well divide and pack their dry-goods, and start, one in the direction of the rising and the other toward the setting sun, nor look at their watches, even in these days of steamboats and steam-cars, until the small-pointer-hand has had time to perform one entire revolution. You may as well think of rebuilding your burned cottage of the ashes which the wind and smoke have scattered over surrounding acres, as to set about the restoration of confidence between married people who have so often caught each other in de ception that each considers the other-to speak in plain language-an unmitigated liar. When, therefore, deception which is not discovered leads to distrust and jealousy in the mind of the one who successfully practises it, and when the discovery of duplicity on the part of one or both inaugu rates a fiery hell on the family hearth, it is plain that the only safe plan for the husband and wife to pursue is to have no secrets which are not mutual secrets; and to decide what is and what is not a secret, no better rule can