e fair captive brought an immense sum of
money to ransom her, they were much surprised at Scipio's noble
conduct, and in the ecstacy of joy and gratitude, they pressed him to
accept it as a token of thankfulness. Scipio, unable to resist their
importunate solicitations, told them he accepted it; but ordering it
to be laid at his feet, he thus addressed Allutius:--"To the portion
you are to receive from your father-in-law, I add this, and beg you
would accept it as a nuptial present:" thus exhibiting in the whole
transaction a rare instance of modesty, disinterestedness, and
benevolence, well worthy of imperishable record, as a moral lesson for
mankind.

When Araspes had commended the fair Panthea to Cyrus, as a beauty
worthy his admiration, he replied--"For that very reason I will not
see her, lest if by thy persuasion I should see her but once, she
herself might persuade me to see her often, and spend more time with
her than would be for the advantage of my own affairs."--Alexander the
Great would not trust his eyes in the presence of the beauteous Queen
of Persia, but kept himself out of the reach of her charms, and
treated only with her aged mother. These, as they were peculiar acts
of continence, so were they as absolutely checks of curiosity, which
never sleeps in youthful breasts when beauty elicits admiration.

Cicero, treating of the many degrees of human commerce and society,
places matrimony in the first rank. In fact, marriage is not only a
state capable of the highest human felicity, but it is an institution
well calculated to destroy those rank and noxious weeds of the
passions which, by their pestiferous influence, spread misery and
death around the social hemisphere. Marriage is the basis of
community, and the cement of society;--it is, or ought to be, that
state of perfect friendship in which there are, according to
Pythagoras, "two bodies with but one soul." It is in the genial
atmosphere of this noble communion of sentiment and affection that the
virtue of continence comes forth in all its dazzling splendour. Milton
has touched this subject with so chaste and elegant a pen, that the
description, one would think, must confirm the husband in his
happiness, and reclaim the man of profligate and licentious
principles:--

"Hail, wedded love! mysterious law! true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise, of all things common else.
By thee adultrous lust was driven from men,
Among