designation. This is also to be attended to in asking after the health of friends. Never say, 'How is your wife?' 'How is your brother?' &c. Ask for Mrs

Mr

Conversation is most pleasant when it is on general topics— as matters in literature, science, and art, or historical and recent events, and public characters. Censorious and sarcastic remarks on friends and acquaintances are particularly odious, and, like observations on servants, articles of furniture, and dress, indicate an inferior order of mind. Uneducated and underbred persons who have suddenly acquired wealth, and who affect a high style of society and living, are apt to speak much about themselves and their possessions. They talk of 'my carriage,’ 'my carpets,' 'my pictures,'' my dinner-service,' 'my invitation from Lord,' and 'his lordship said so-and-so,' and 'I have just had a call from her ladyship'-together with much of the same sort. Conduct of this kind is the height of vulgarity, and always marks the snob.

In a small volume under the title of The Laws of Etiquette, we find the following sensible remarks on conversation: The great business in company is conversation. It should be studied as an art. Style in conversation is as important, and as capable of cultivation, as style in writing. The manner of saying things is what gives them their value. The most important requisite for succeeding here is constant and unfaltering attention. That which Churchill has noted as the greatest virtue on the stage, is also the most necessary in company-to be "always attentive to the business of the scene." Your understanding should, like your person, be armed at all points. Never go into society with your mind en déshabillé. It is fatal to success to be at all absent or distrait. The secret of conversation has been said to consist in building upon the remark of your companion. Men of the strongest minds, who have solitary habits and bookish dispositions, rarely excel in sprightly colloquy, because they seize upon the thing itself-the subject abstractly-instead of attending

to the language of other speakers, and do not cultivate verbal pleasantries and refinements. He who does otherwise, gains a reputation for quickness, and pleases by shewing that he has regarded the observation of others. It is an error to suppose that conversation consists in talking. A more important thing is to listen discreetly. Mirabeau said, that to succeed in the world, it is necessary to submit to be taught many things which you understand, by persons who know nothing about them. The most refined and gratifying compliment you can pay, is to listen. "The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others," says La Bruyère, "than in shewing a great deal yourself: he who goes from your conversation pleased with himself and his own wit, is perfectly well pleased with you. Most men had rather please than admire you, and seek less to be instructednay, delighted—than to be approved and applauded. The most delicate pleasure is to please another."'

In the same work, the following useful observations occur: "The members of a family, in their attentions to a company, should be very quiet and deliberate. It is a sure mark that they are unaccustomed to receiving company, when they are observed flying about, talking in a loud voice, and hoping that everybody finds everything agreeable. Should you have the misfortune, at a dinner or evening party at the house of another, to break anything which you take up, or to throw down a waiter loaded with splendid cut-glass, you should not make an apology, or appear the least mortified, or indeed take any notice whatever of the calamity. If you exhibited any regret on such an occasion, you would seem to indicate that the loss was of importance to your entertainer-an extremely poor compliment. A highbred man, if he should break a vase which cost a little fortune, would avoid shewing any concern, but would toss aside the fragments as common rubbish. I need not say that the master or mistress of the house should treat such an event with utter indifference, however deeply they may groan in spirit; they

should not even go the length of saying: "That is a matter of no consequence;" that is to be taken for granted.'

HINTS ON MATRIMONY.

A

S youths advance to maturity, they naturally think of matrimony. The marriage state, honourable in all, is, as you are doubtless aware, agreeable to Scriptural ordinance. According to the law of some countries, marriage is simply a civil contract, but generally it is recognised as a Christian institution, entered into under the sanctions of the church. In any form, it is an obligation of a binding and solemn character, not to be undertaken lightly or from reprehensible motives.

The choice of a wife is at best a kind of lottery. The object of regard may be all that can satisfy the eye-faultless in form and deportment, educated, and possessed of the usual accomplishments, and yet devoid of those qualities which should be expected in a partner for life. The really essential things are that she be good-tempered, obliging, healthy, frugal, tasteful in domestic arrangements, capable of being a good helpmate, a good mother; and besides all this, belonging to a family whose character and circumstances are respectable. Considering the life-long misery that may be produced by the single false step of making an improper choice, the recklessness with which this hazard is undertaken is truly astonishing-welldoing young men united to extravagant slatterns, the industrious yoked to the idle, the kind and beneficent-minded inextricably allied to

the shrewish, the mean, or the vicious. Nor are the chances of making a mistake confined to one side; for, unfortunately, women are deceived by appearances as well as men, and pay equally heavy penalties for their indiscretion.

To make an alliance for merely mercenary motives, is the height of folly, for it may amount to the bartering of every comfort for some fleeting advantage, which no man of independent feelings ought for a moment to think of. Still more reprehensible than marriages for money, is the intermarrying of cousins and persons affected with hereditary disease. Can we speak too strongly on this point? The dispersion of mankind may be said to be a Scriptural ordination. When they cluster in a spot, and intermarriages over a series of generations are confined to the members of a small community, deterioration of race is a well-known consequence. The natural, as well as the divine law, forbids intermarriage where there is too near propinquity of blood-the penalty being first physical, and, if persisted in, mental deterioration. Repeated intermarriages among certain royal families in Europe, have, for example, filled several thrones with persons of weak mind; the highest social position affording no exemption from the course of punishment which ordinarily attends a violation of the law of God. Although cousins are not reckoned among those degrees of relationship that are forbidden by Scripture to intermarry, experience shews that alliances of this kind are objectionable, and therefore to be avoided.

'Where there is a liability to hereditary disease, it becomes a duty both to others and one's self to abstain from the marriage tie. It may be very true that such is only an inherited misfortune, and that it is a hardship for such a person to be debarred from an association which others enter into for the promotion of their happiness; but these are only smaller evils, which it is proper to submit to in order to avoid greater. By forbearing from matrimony, the evil is kept at its original

amount; by marrying, the risk is incurred of widely enlarging it. A person who takes a hereditary disease into the marriage connection, may be said to be laying the foundation of a life of trial and misery. Like all other selfish wrong acts, it is severely punished. An offspring probably arises, only to be sources of anxiety and affliction to their parents, or to wring their hearts by what reason may afterwards acknowledge as a comparative mercy-premature death. It often happens that such a family begin, one after another, at a certain age, to pine, then sicken, and drop into the grave. Imagine the feelings of a parent who sees these nevertheless endeared objects going on to their almost certain doom, conscious that all earthly aid is unavailing to counteract the decrees of nature. Or suppose the more agonising feelings with which the first symptoms of a hereditary mental taint are observed arising. The heart even of those in no way connected melts with compassion at the mention of such distresses; yet there cannot be a doubt that the parties are only reaping the harvest of the herb of bitterness which they have sowed. Experience tells that certain malignant ailments go from parents to children. Reason therefore infers that persons so affected ought not to marry. This is a counsel which they are bound to obey. Do they disregard the injunction, they have only themselves to blame for the consequences. The most sympathising bystander must see and acknowledge this truth. It is unfortunate that many have but obscure notions of the government of these matters by invariable natural laws. In perfect ignorance, or in some vague hope of escape, they rush into circumstances which may be said to secure their ruin. Were they fully aware of the truth, they would avoid such circumstances sedulously. Conscientiousness to the other party in the matrimonial contract, demands their doing so. Nay, it is demanded by more than this-conscientiousness towards the possible offspring of the alliance. To usher into existence beings who are only to be a burden to