Page:Advice to young ladies on their duties and conduct in life - Arthur - 1849.djvu/172

164 is not well enough formed to bear the great physical changes that usually occur.

If young ladies would learn to think above the fact of marriage, and not consider it a state in which they were merely to find the highest possible delight attainable on earth, but a state in which they could be most useful, and impart blessings and dispense happiness to others, they would not rush so thoughtlessly into this important relation, but would be very sure that what they loved in another was really worth loving, and that they were loved in return for their mental and moral qualities, and not merely for their person.

True love—that which abides—has its foundation in a knowledge and appreciation of moral qualities. These cannot be known without the power of discerning them, and this power is not sufficiently developed, in very young persons, to enable them to decide upon the fitness of another to become a wife or a husband. Family connections, talents, beauty of person, and exterior grace, may all be decided upon; but other qualifications are required—without which marriage is only an external union—that call for a deeper discrimination than any one possesses in the first years of his or her majority.

Too early marriages, from the causes briefly