sensual appetite by her graces, Tier youth, and all those other attractions with which she is endowed. Alas! for the old dotard who dares to drink of this enchanted cup I Nature will assuredly avenge herself most cruelly for her violated laws. "It is better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave" is a proverb which reveals the corruption of our manners, and the stupid infamy which makes of the nuptial couch an arena of debauch as detest- able as the very slums of vice.
The interests of posterity, no less than of public morals, demand prohibitory laws upon this subject, and we call upon our legislators to boldly prescribe the extreme differ- ence in age, beyond which it shall be unlawful for mar- riages to be solemnized. A law of this nature would do much toward reforming the injustice, now daily committed, in the re-marriage of widowers, the rights of whose chil- dren are thus ruthlessly invaded. Independently of the proverbial cruelty of step-mothers, there are often prop- erty considerations of great importance. Domestic infe- licity of the most flagrant character is thus introduced in families whose home-circles had been hitherto models of innocent happiness. The evil would be well-nigh reme- died by the proposed legislation, for, if the temptation to seek young wives were removed, few old men would care for re-marriage. The products of such marriages are generally vitiated in blood, sickly, and predisposed to all morbific agencies. The explanation of this fact is com- plex, and relates tb the abnormal character of the seminal fluid, to the physical prostration of the father, and doubt- less, also, to the absence of harmonious conditions in the generative act.
Every one must have observed in the progeny of old men that sad and serious aspect, so different from the
