ness and perfection. On one side or on both, "marriages of inclination^' are very apt to be carnal. Love perishes in the satisfaction of the senses, and the true character of the parties being unveiled, the disenchantment leads frequently to the most pronounced antipathies. "Love founded upon beauty does not last," says Plutarch. "Carnal mar- riages begin in joy and end in despair," says St. Gregory. When other considerations than mere physical attributes do not form the basis of union, the slander of a celebrated pagan becomes an aphorism: "There are only two happy days in marriage — the day of the nuptials and the day of the funeral."
We have said that conjugal tenderness has no heroes. We of course referred to the facts of history. Let us record one for the honor of our sex as set forth by a physician and author of high standing: "Many years ago we were called to an old lady whom we found dying from "respectable poverty." Mal-nutrition, at an age when the system not only tolerates, but demands those little luxuries which in earlier life are superfluous, had but too surely done its work, and our patient succumbed to a gangrene of the extremities which no art could arrest. Among the many friends who thronged the house, eager to minister to the needs discovered too late, was a young man of twenty whose assiduous devotion attracted our especial notice. His form was beautifully athletic, and he would have been strikingly handsome, but for the ravages of a small-pox, which had not, however, destroyed, the regularity of his features, the beauty of his hazel eye, nor the luxuriance of his dark- brown hair. There was a grace and suppleness in every movement, and a frankness and cordiality of manner which won all hearts. No one seemed to know anything of him save that he was a stranger in the great city, where success
