had decreed that, in the decline of the generative faculty, while the other functions are still in their perfection, man shall enjoy in the calmness of reason and silence of the passions the results of his work, and seeing himself, in some sort, reproduced in his children, may look forward without regret to the end of his mortal existence. Nor is this the least sublime side of married life. Nothing can exceed the beneficent calm of parents descending the down- hill of life, in whose well-regulated existence the past has no remorse for violated laws, and with whom the present, freed from the torments of excitement, has only the sweet rewards of contentment and chaste repose. Surrounded by the numerous pledges of their earlier loves, they may indeed abandon the cares, and toils, and struggles of life to those who owe to them their existence, and thus far their maintenance. It is the natural order of things, that the parents shall thus, as it were, change places with their children. After the "change of life" with woman, sexual congress, while permissible, should be infrequent, no less for her own sake than that of the husband, whose advanc- ing years should warn him of the medical maxim : "Each time that he delivers himself to this indulgence he casts a shovelful of earth upon his coffin." The caution is the concentration of wisdom, and we commend it to our readers — at the risk of not being heeded.
A profound observer has written: "One of the chief causes of this infraction of the true principles of hygiene is, that man, in the beginning of old age, long refuses to believe himself to be what he is. His reminiscences, almost synonymous with regrets, are always tormenting his memory and his heart; for he constantly looks back to contemplate on the distant horizon, that promised land of love and its pleasures, where it would be so sweet to
