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Do you not see, every Sabbath, at church, the young man, or woman, upon whose fair and delicate countenance the peculiar impress of the early doomed is stamped; and, as a slight but hollow cough comes upon your ear, does it not recall the death knell, which rang in the same sad note before, to the father or the mother? Who of you has not followed some young friend to his long resting-place, and found that the grass had not yet grown over the grave of his brother -- that the row of white marbles, beneath which slept his parents and sisters, were still glistering in freshness; and that the letters which told their names, and their early death, seemed clear, as if cut but yesterday?

They tell us, that physical education is attended to in this country; but where is the teacher, where is the clergyman even, who dares step forth in these cases, and say to those who are thus doomed, the laws of God, and of humanity, forbid your marriage? and where are the young men and women, who would listen to him if he should thus forbid the bann? It is not that they are wanting in conscientiousness; they may be conscientious and disinterested; it may be that they do not know they are doing wrong, because they are not acquainted with all the organic laws of their nature; for all that is done in schools or colleges, towards physical education, is the mere strengthening of the muscular system by muscular exercise, which is not half enough.

But to proceed to considerations less closely connected with the physical condition of our countrymen and women; for unfortunately, the nature of our social Institutions is not only to injure the physical nature of man, and to lower the standard of manly beauty, strength, and health, but to encourage and excite the organ of acquisitiveness into such morbid activity, as to cause us to neglect all the others, and to make us both the most money-loving, and money-getting people on earth.

I do not mean indeed by a social institution, any special edict, any established law, or even tangible regulation -- but the spirit of our social relations. The man who rises early, and sits up late, who devotes his whole energies for years to the accumulation of money, who fixes his eye steadily on the distant pole-star of fortune; and follows on untiringly, and unhesitatingly; stumbling over all considerations of health, intellectual improvement, domestic and social enjoyments; such a man is considered as a model, and pointed out for imitation; and when he arrives at the golden goal, when he becomes a millionaire, he is admired, courted, and imitated; but, is he a happy man? far from it. Is he indeed a man, in a moral and intellectual point of view? alas! but a very poor specimen of one.

I would not lessen industry -- I would not damp ardor or enterprise; no! let the spirit of man be strained and spurred to its utmost efforts; but do not let it be distorted by being strained in one direction only; do not let it be broken by weakness, and neglect of any part; do not let the immortal spirit be spurred only by acquisitiveness, and hurried on by self-esteem alone. Phrenology admits the disposition to accumulate property us innate in human nature; it recognises the value and the necessity of this disposition; but it shows that it must be kept subordinate to the higher and human parts of man's nature, or that it will become his tyrant and his curse. Acquisitiveness has been the ruling passion here for many years -- it has become the tyrant -- it is becoming the curse. Its nature is to cry forever, "more and more, give me more:" at first it demanded and received untiring industry, frugality, and the regular offerings of daily and yearly gain; but these were not enough; for the spirit of speculation was abroad; there went a voice through the land, that enterprise and daring should be used; the ploughman left his plough -- the artist his bench -- the merchant his desk -- all disregarded and despised the certain but small returns of regular business, and all followed the ignis fatuus of fortune, which was flitting over the land. They could not, however, follow fast enough, and they borrowed the means; but when all borrow, there must soon be none to lend; property could not be increased in a moment, but its representative; money, could be, and it was: every man obtained what he could; he counted upon that as certain gain, which might or not become so, and strained his credit to the utmost.

The facilities for rapid and profitable conversion of natural productions into real property; the opportunities for increase of the real and tangible capital of society, which this country has presented, have been unprecedented and unparalled in the history of the world. Each generation was doubling and quadrupling its property, but, people could not be content with this; they saw a golden vision ahead, they clutched at the shadow, and fancied they caught the substance: each one calculated upon what he might be worth in ten years; he lived up to this standard; he contracted obligations upon a corresponding scale; he planted, but watered not with the sweat of his brow; for he expected that his seedling would spring up gourd-like to greatness in a day.