pure and
virtuous condition of society, therefore, man as well as woman must be
pure and virtuous; both alike shunning all acts impinging on the heart,
character, and conscience--shunning them as poison, which, once imbibed,
can never be entirely thrown out again, but mentally embitters, to a
greater or less extent, the happiness of after-life.

And here we would venture to touch upon a delicate topic. Though it is
one of universal and engrossing human interest, the moralist avoids it,
the educator shuns it, and parents taboo it. It is almost considered
indelicate to refer to Love as between the sexes; and young persons are
left to gather their only notions of it from the impossible love-stories
that fill the shelves of circulating libraries. This strong and
absorbing feeling, this BESOIN D'AIMER--which nature has for wise
purposes made so strong in woman that it colours her whole life and
history, though it may form but an episode in the life of man--is
usually left to follow its own inclinations, and to grow up for the most
part unchecked, without any guidance or direction whatever.

Although nature spurns all formal rules and directions in affairs of
love, it might at all events be possible to implant in young minds such
views of Character as should enable them to discriminate between
the true and the false, and to accustom them to hold in esteem those
qualities of moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a
scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people
to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice
against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its
name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term,
is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness,
is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The
sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration
engendered by it, all prove its claim to a high moral influence. It is
the triumph of the unselfish over the selfish part of our nature."

It is by means of this divine passion that the world is kept ever
fresh and young. It is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds an
effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo round age. It glorifies the
present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by
the beams it casts forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem and
admiration, has an elevating and p