the human family; and as the world is growing wiser faster than ever before, with the advantage of maintaining all its advances in wisdom, and so working a steady progression, we may reasonably hope that sound views in regard to the relations of the sexes may soon become universally entertained, and everywhere practically applied to the improvement of the condition of mankind.

Social science, rapidly becoming developed, and widely studied, gives us the promise of a condition of human society, in which the obstacles of inequality of fortune, position, and other artificial distinctions shall be done away within which both sexes, with superior facilities for forming acquaintance with each other, will be freed from all restraint upon that liberty of choice, so essential to every condition of happiness in the marriage relation. Such a social reform, so far from promoting licentiousness, would do much to put an end to it, by removing the temptations and excuses; which grow out of the inharmonious arrangements of even our best and purest social conditions.

WOMAN.

PART FIFTH.

MARRIAGE.

THIS, as it will by many be considered, the most important portion of our subject, will require our most earnest and serious attention; and it is difficult to conceive of anything connected with the female sex, which can be of higher or more universal interest. Man has a historical interest entirely disconnected with the other sex, but wo`man has very little, if any, in our present social organizations, apart from her connection with man.

Marriage, in its legal sense, is a contract between a man and woman to live together in the connubial relation. In a higher sense, marriage is the union of mutual love, attended with the highest perfection of human existence and happiness. As the real marriage of mutual love does not always exist with, and may often be found separate from, the contract recognised by law, it is of the latter we shall principally treat in the following pages.

The existence of two sexes, and the manner of the re-production of the species, suppose a marriage relation. The protection of the weaker sex, and the care of helpless infancy, require it. But nature, in the attraction of the sexes for each other, has provided for these necessities. Either sex is lonely and imperfect without the other. Marriage is the natural condition of adult humanity; and celibacy is the artificial and imperfect exception to the general law.

The relation of the sexes, which corresponds to marriage in man, extends far down the chain of animal creation, and is variously developed in the vegetable; and, what

is curious, we observe in the human race many of the various conditions which exist among the lower tribes of animated nature. Some classes of animals are found in pairs, corresponding to the marriage of one husband and one wife, as in European nations; among other animals there is one male to a large number of females, as is tolerated and customary with the human race in the greater part of Asia and Africa. There are, in the animal creation also, instances of a single female to a number of males; and even this development of nature finds its correspondence in Tartary, in Ceylon, in the South-Sea Islands, and irregularly and exceptionally in many other countries, not excepting our own.

The sexual relations of horses, cattle, sheep, and common fowls, being familiar examples, are just as perfect, in the order of nature, as are the coupled relations of the lion, tiger, and turtle-dove; and the queen-bee-the sole female of the hive-has a right to her whole family circle of husbands, drones though they be, and destined to be cut off by the industrious neuters, on the principle that "if a bee work not, neither shall he eat." The drones are as useful in their generation as are the German princes to European royalty-but the latter have not always been so easily got rid of!

It may be asked, If all these varieties of marriage relations exist in the animal tribes-which partake more or less of our nature and intelligence-may it not be that monogamy, polygamy, and other forms of marriage, in different human races, are quite natural, and therefore right? The philosophers of Asia and Africa would doubtless argue in this manner; and European philosophers might found quite as good an argument upon the maxim, "whatever is, is right.' These various conditions exist, and therefore must have entered into the design of creation, and help to form a part of the great plan of nature.

We will not be betrayed into an argument on the subject. It is our business rather to represent things as they are, than prove that they either are or are not what they should be. It may be our belief that there is much of wrong, or of imperfection, everywhere, and that the best existing conditions are very far from being what they

should be. Undoubtedly, the Author of our being has given us the instincts that ought to lead us truly, and we may hope that they one day will, since, in this matter, it is feeling, rather than reason, that must ever govern us.

The common belief is, that the whole human race descended from a single pair, who were created at nearly the same time, by the direct power and act of the Almighty. Another belief is, that the human race is the result of a progressive development from the lower links in the chain of creation, and that the various and strongly-marked varieties of the human race, or various races of humanity, have had distinct origins, being developed at different periods, and under such varying circumstances, as to account for their great and striking differences and peculiarities.

If we take the types of the highest and the lowest of the human races, the Caucasian for the one, and the Australian, or one of the South African tribes for the other, it is very difficult to believe that they had a common parentage, in one original pair. As long as there has been any observation of the conditions of mankind, the distinction has been equally wide. The highest races, were, so far as we know, always the highest-the lowest have had no change.

How can we account for the permanent characteristics of certain races, and the progressive tendencies of others? Three thousand years ago, or more, the Chinese had gained a certain point of civilization, where they have ever since remained, though then in the possession of what we consider the very elements of progress. They had gunpowder, the mariner's compass, the art of printing, and great industrial resources-moreover, and more than all, literature and science were the direct paths to honor and distinction. Had the Chinese been of the same origin and race as we, would that whole people have advanced thus far, to have remained for ever stationary at a fixed point, a boundary, beyond which they seem to have no power to pass?

But, as we have intimated, arguments on these grave subjects do not belong to the plan of our work. We may discuss them hereafter. Our present object is to give the history of the institution of marriage, in all its varieties, with especial reference to the character and condition of woman, and it may be of no importance whether there was

one single pair for the whole human race, or whether each quarter of the world, at different epochs, produced its highest development of animal life in one of the varieties of the human race.

If we take the hypothesis of a single couple, their's was the first existing marriage. If their children were born and remained in equal numbers of both sexes, it is highly probable that the marriage of one husband to one wife was continued as a custom, but an excess, at the beginning, of the number of children of one sex over the other, supposes, at once, a violation of the seemingly established law.

If we accept the scriptural account, we find that though Adam had but one wife, his immediate descendants, in his life-time, married a greater number. And when we come down to the primitive history of the Hebrew race, after the Deluge, we find the holy patriarchs taking wives and concubines, without any apparent restraint, and with no guide but their inclinations and ability to take care of them. Thus Abraham had eight or nine wives or women; and Isaac and Jacob each had several. The practice of having a plurality of wives, introduced in the life-time of Adam, has ever since been the custom of the greatest portion of the world; and this custom is so fixed, so seemingly ineradicable, that even Christian missionaries have been obliged to give up the point, and despair of converting men to Christianity, if the giving up of all but one wife is insisted upon. The polygamist cannot be made to understand or believe that his practice is contrary to the law of nature, or the requirements of religion; and our missionaries have, with what wisdom or propriety we shall not attempt to decide, concluded to leave this matter to the workings of time or the influences of grace.

We purpose now, commencing with the earliest ages of which we have any account, to give an impartial history of the connection of woman with man in the marriage relation in all the countries in the world, and among all the races and tribes of humanity. Such an account cannot but be interesting, and we trust, that it may prove instructive.

The first difficulty we encounter is the question whether