the personal benefits of health in the greater power of present action, the intense intellects and feeble frames of one generation are a ruinous draft upon both the physical and mental powers of that which succeeds.  A race of overwrought brains in enfeebled bodies must be recruited from a more healthful stock, or their posterity will, in time, decline into idiocy or cease from the earth.  The process of degeneracy, by an infallible law, will pass from the body to the intellect; and the descendant of a Luther or a Bacon go down to the level of the most stupid boor that drives his oxen over the sands of southern Africa.

* * * * *

Original.

INORDINATE GRIEF THE EFFECT OF AN UNSUBDUED WILL.

I called on a friend a few months since, who for a full year had been watching with maternal solicitude over an invalid daughter still in the morning of life, upon whom had been lavished all the fond caresses of parental love and tenderness.  Every advantage which wealth, and the means of education could impart to qualify her for happiness in this life had been hers—­nor had her religious culture been entirely overlooked.

In her father’s family there had been little effort made to instill into the minds of their children the principles of holy living, and it was felt that there was but little necessity to give them habits of self-denial or self-reliance.

This daughter, notwithstanding her happy childhood in having all her wants anticipated, and upon whose pathway the sun had shone most brightly, was now, like an unsubdued child, under a most painful infliction of the rod of God.

Two years previous to this time, during a revival of religion, she publicly covenanted to walk in all the statutes and ordinances of God’s Word and house, blamelessly.  Thus was she married to Christ, and she then felt, and her friends felt, that she had chosen Christ to be the guide of her youth.

But how could she be expected, never having had her will thoroughly subdued, or been called to bear any yoke or burden, fully to understand, or to realize what was implied, or required in becoming a disciple of Christ, so that she could at once fully adopt the language,

  “Jesus, I my cross have taken,
    All to leave and follow thee,
  Naked, poor, despised, forsaken,
    Thou from hence my all shall be.”

Just one year from her espousal to Christ the village of ——­ was all excitement, on an occasion which had called the young and the middle-aged to the house of her father,—­the wealthy Mr. G——­, when this lovely daughter was to be united in marriage to the accomplished, the graceful, the pious Mr. L——­, a universal favorite with persons of all ages and ranks.  A short time previous to his union to the young and beautiful belle of ——­, he had, under most favorable auspices, commenced a lucrative business in the city of ——.