Year: 1869

In marriage BY consent, the divorce
was by consent, or by Reputation on
the part either of husband or wife,
and it was necessary that seven per-
sons should witness the divorce. The
one who dissolved the marriage without
cause incurred certain money penalties,
as did the party who by misconduct
gave the other good ground for repu-
diation. When we return from these
unsettled aud unjust DEGREES TO the un-
settled and uniust-frequently very
unjust-decrees which necessarily ae-
company. the administration of the
modern matrimonial law, we are struck
with the vast distinction. The old
Romans we're simple in their regula-
tions, and their regulations involved
certain penalties in the breach The
moderns are complicated in their reg
ulations, and their regulations in
yolve in the breach unknown quail
ties.


/ We assume that jurists ought 10
make laws calculated to elevate the
soul of people. If the tenderest ties
which bind together the human race
are to be vulgarly violated, aud ex-
posed in their violation to the jeers OF
the low, then degeneracy will come
rapidly upon us. But who can shut
his eyes to the fact that Charles and
Euphugenia may place themselves
above all law? 1t is for them to cult
vate love of the order thus SAID to
have been described by Pope:


Loves no irregular desire,


No sudden start or raging pain,


That in moment turns to fire,


! And in a moment cools again"


Many lovers make fools of them
selves, or rather we should say many
people make fools of themselves by
dreaming that they are lovers. TO
dream that one is lover is the most
absurd thing in the world; yet how
many conceive irregular desire, sud
den start, raging pain, to be love! fire
and heat, snow and vapor-nothing
more. And it is easy to perceive that
the self-imposed conviction in favor of
being in love is calculated to bring
about exactly the state of things against
which the Romans so carefully provi-
ded. Once let an individual of either
sex entertain the belief that Charles
or Euphugenia has hold upon the
heart-that certainly a recess. a niche,
some little hole or corner is sacred
to him or to her therein and with in
finite regret, with excessive reluctance
will he disabuse himself of his sweet
credulity. In matters of the heart all
men and women are but children,


PLEASED with rattle, tickled with straw"
They draw inspiration from books and
pictures, dress out their fancies in the
gaudiest flowers of imagination. They
borrow wings, fly over some imagin-
ary Icarian sea, where their beloved
lies sleeping; but suddenly Apollo
touches their car, the wings collapse,
and the cool waves of the ocean temper
the mind to reason; perforce they per-
suade themselves they are not in love
after all


If we are asked whether we would
destroy such illusions in the bud by
making every betrothed accept ad-
dresses over a deposited bundle of
bank-notes, we should reply that it
was consideration for the civil law
Looking at the question in purely
domestic aspect, we are certainly in
favor of moderating the ardor of that
divine fire which all ends in smoke
Filtration is one of the institutions of
the country, and SO long as Irritation
remains Irritation, the man among us
who is most anxious to promote happy
marriages would give it his hearty
sanction. But is five minutes flirta-
ton in a ballroom, in the dim walks of
a rural .fete, in the mystic moonlight
which lights up the path the boat is
to take along the silvery river at the
termination of an Aquatic excursion,
to be considered sufficient warrant for
a committal of the most sacred inter
ests we possess to everlasting pawn?- -
These brief firtations are very, very
pleasant; we do not dispute it. But
matrimony is very real and very seri-
Gus. Life is not all ballroom, not all
dim walks, not all mystic moonlight on
a silvery river. Mr.. Ruskin, the most
beautiful of all modern, if not OF all
writers upon art, ancient as well as
modern, has given us an idea Of what
marriage should be, under his title IN
Modern Painters "Of Unity, or the
Type of the Divine Comprehensive
ness" "The unity of spirits" he re-
marks, "is partly in their sympathy,
and partly in their giving and taking,
and always IN their love; and these are
their delight and their strength, for
their strength is in their co-working
and army fellowship, and their delight
is in the giving and receiving of altern-
ate and perpetual good; their insepara-
BILE dependency on each others being,
and their essential and perfect depend
ing on their Creators. And SO the
unity. of earthly creatures is theil
power and peace; not like the dead
and cold peace of undisturbed stones
, and solitary mountains, but the living
, peace of trust, and the living power 0
. support, of hands that hold each 9th
Eer and are STILL" These being grea
) truths, it is surely fit that knots shoult
3 not be lightly tied; that when tie.
,tthey should not be lightly snapped