sacred, indissoluble, fraught with all that earth has to bestow of happiness or misery, is entered upon much of the plan and principle of a partnership account in mercantile affairs—­each bringing his or her quantum of worldly possessions—­and often with even less inquiry as to moral qualities than persons so situated would make; God’s ordinances are not to be so mocked, and such violations of his laws are severely visited upon offenders against them.  It would be laughable, if it were not too melancholy, to see beings bound by the holiest ties, who ought to be the sharers in the most sacred duties—­united, perhaps, but in one aim, and that to secure from a world which cares not for them, a few atoms more of external observance and attention:  to this noble aim sacrificing their own ease and comfort, and the future prospects of those dependent on them.  If half the sacrifice thus made to the imperious demands of fashion, (and which is received with the indifference it deserves,) were exerted in a good cause, what benefits might it not produce?

While women are thus content to sacrifice delicacy, affection, principle, to the desire of worldly establishment or aggrandizement, how is the regeneration of society to be expected from them?  Formerly, too, this spirit was confined to the old, hackneyed in the ways of the world, and who, having worn out the trifling affections which they ever had, would subject those of their children to the maxims of worldly prudence.  This we learn from fiction and the drama, where the worldly wisdom of age is always represented as opposed to the generous but imprudent passions of youth.  But now, in these our better and more enlightened days, those mercenary maxims which were odious even in age, are found in the mouths of the young and the fair,—­or at least, if not in their mouths, in their actions.  To sacrifice affection to interest is a praiseworthy thing.  It is fearful to hear the withering sneer with which that folly, love, is spoken of by young and innocent lips—­a sneer of conscious superiority, too!  It is a superiority not to be envied, and which makes them objects of greater pity than those whom they affect to despise.  There is no subject so sacred that it has not a side open to ridicule, and all the most pure and noble attributes of our nature may be converted into subjects for a jest, by minds in which no lofty idea can find an echo.  All notions of unworldly and unselfish attachment are branded with the name of romantic follies, unworthy of sensible persons; and the idealities of love, like all other idealities, are fast disappearing beneath the leaden mantle of expediency.