Much having been offered in every age by learned and pious men of almost every country on the delicate subject now before us it would be seeming vanity in me to expect I should be able to come in competition with those learned ones or vainly to imagine it would be in my power to elucidate or throw any new light on the important subject on which I am about to treat. What I would more particularly in the first place wish to draw the attention of my readers to is a few remarks which I will class under the head of early and late marriages. While I proceed to commit to paper the effusions of a mind somewhat at war with opinions often asserted and as confidently maintained by parents as to the conduct proper to be pursued by children when having arrived at the age of maturity and which opinions are held sacred by them from a sense of filial duty permit me generous readers if in the perusal you should imagine me capable of endeavouring to alienate the duty of children by presuming to point out a new source of argument and opinions tending to counteract those instill'd into their tender bosoms by prudent and wise parents permit me to assure you my object is in part to endeavour to shew the fatal error many parents fall into through mistaken ideas by an over-ruling and I may add a too frequent indiscreet assumption of that power vested in them over their children as relates to the choice of a partner in life.