But legal

be allowed to marry, at all. And this inflicted on the former one. paper is meant to deal with a woman's separation-a mensa et thoro-giving position and duty after marriage; when to the wife exactly the position of a time has proved without doubt that widow, and to the children the safety the marriage was not "made in of being fatherless, for a bad father is Heaven," but-in the other place. worse than none-ought to be easily Is she justified in destroying not only and cheaply attainable by all classes. herself but her hapless children, in that hell upon earth which a bad man can create around him by his unrestrained vices?

The question of income and main tenance would have its difficulties; but, as a general rule, a wife who thus voluntarily leaves her husband should. That word vices answers the question. only take away with her what is absoNo mere fault or misfortune, such as lutely her own. She wishes to be incompatibility of temper, hopeless freed from himself; she does not want sickness, or worldly ruin, does in the his money. Also, though this may least abrogate that solemn covenant sometimes fall hard, I think the sup"for better for worse"--but vice does. port of the children should devolve Confirmed drunkenness, evil courses upon her. This removes the possibility of any kind, ingrained lack of prin- of mercenary or worldly or vicious ciple, cruel tyranny, and that violent motives for the separation, and places temper that is akin to madness and it entirely on moral grounds. Money, equally dangerous-whatever compels a wrung legally out of a bad father, woman to teach her children that to would, in most women's eyes, only serve God they must not imitate their bring a curse with it; and there are father, warrants her in quitting him, few mothers who, if put to the test, and taking them from him. When- would not prefer the hardest poverty ever things come to that pass that the for themselves and their children, rather vileness of the father will destroy the than the misery of a home in which children, physically and morally, then the name of husband and father is a the mother's course is clear. She must mere sham; where-sharpest pang of save them, nor suffer their father's sins all-they have to sit still and see their to blight their whole future existence. little ones slowly contaminated by one For-let me dare to utter the plain to whom the hapless innocents owe truth-they ought never to have existed nothing but the mere accident of exisat all. To make a drunkard, a tence. debauchee, a scoundrel of any sort, the By the outside world, this condition father of her children, is, to a righteous of quasi-widowhood, if sad and difficult, woman, a sin almost equivalent to should be held in no way dishonorable. child-murder. And she slays not only To it would attach none of the degratheir bodies but their souls; entailing dations and foul revelations of divorce, on them an hereditary curse, which indeed, the fact that separation was may not be rooted out for generations. easy would make divorce all the more Therefore, for any good woman difficult, as should be. Easy divorce married to a scoundrel there is but one loosens all the rivets which hold society duty-separation. Not divorce. This, together, and, while giving no consolaby permitting remarriage, which the tion to innocence, offers a premium to victim would seldom or never desire, guilt. The great safeguard of marriage would allow the victimizer to carry is its inevitableness; the consciousness into a new home the misery he has that no power on earth can ever place

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either party in the same position as amend his ways. If not, he would before their union. Otherwise, only richly deserve the justice without mercy too many couples would separate in-for mercy to the sinful is often the first year of their union. But the mercilessness to the innocent-which mistake, known to be irrevocable, is is Society's only safeguard against such borne, and sometimes partially rem- men. They are not fit for domestic edied. When irremediable, the utmost life; and, though in public life some that both parties can expect and most of them brazen it out to the last, the would desire, is to get free from one best that Society can do for them is to another as free as they can, and save save other women from them, help their children from the consequences their wives to gather together the of their fatal error. fragments of a wrecked existence, and teach their children to cover over with wise and duteous silence the very name of father.

This, and no more than this, I think they have a right to. Neither law, nor public opinion, can place, or ought to place, unhappy married couples in the There are fathers and fathers. same position as if they had never Those who deserve the name will not committed that false step. One can resent my distinguishing between them. deeply pity a woman whose husband is And no good husband is harmed by transported for forgery, or a man laws which protect hapless women whose wife is shut up permanently in against bad husbands. On the other a lunatic asylum; but, though these hand, there are women as unfit to be things involve and justify a life-long mothers as wives, and God help the separation, they would form a ghastly man who has chosen such a one! But, and dangerous argumen for divorce. as I have said, the choice is his own; he Nay, speaking as a woman, and for is-apparently, at least-the active, not women, I doubt if divorce should ever the passive agent in his own hard fate. be permissible. Few of us would either care to become the wife of a divorced man, or feel it right to marry at all while the husband, the father of our children, was still alive.

And he generally bears it in heroic silence. So should she. If, refusing to lower her womanhood by continuing to live with a bad man, she has courage to quit him, she deserves not merely But the spectacle of a woman who pity but respect. But she deserves refuses to condone vice and perpetuate neither, if, while tamely submitting to evil, who has strength to cut off a right her misery, she raises a feeble wailing hand and put out a right eye, rather or a monstrous howling against it. than sin against God and ruin the Such women encourage bad men, and young souls He has intrusted to her, injure good men by appealing to the would be deterrent rather than danger- noble quality of the stronger sex-comous. Many a man, who, knowing his passion. wife dare not or cannot leave him, is It is to obviate this, to set up a standselfish, tyrannical, brutal, breaking ard by which good men can fairly judge every law of God and man except those good women, that I write the present for which he would be openly punished, paper; starting with the principle that if he thought she would leave him, in most cases of unhappy marriage the could get rid of him by means short of first thing to be considered is the good divorce, and without the odium to of the children. Secondly, that while herself and the freedom to him that divorce, being undesirable in itself, and result from divorce--would possibly dangerous to the community at large,

should be made as difficult as possible, | canvas manufacturer, the ironmonger, the separation, restoring to both parties all rights which they had before marriage, except that of re-marrying, should be made easily and honorably obtainable. What men should do in a similar case, I leave to themselves to say. I speak only for women, hoping my words may strengthen some of them to break through that cruel bondage of body and soul, ending in untold misery -nay, worse than misery, guilt-caused by the false interpretation that so many well-meaning, narrow-minded people put upon the words, most sacred words to all who really understand them! "for better for worse."DINAH MULOCK CRAIK, in The Contemporary Review.

"Now let us, for one moment, consider what a successful operatic establishment means. How many persons does it give employment to? Foremost come the principal singers and chorus; then there is the ballet; sometimes there are several hundreds of supernumeraries—a godsend to people of any class out of work. There is the orchestra, giving permanent employment to sixty or seventy people, instead of their playing at stray concerts. What an outlet to pupils of our musical schools! There is the composer, and the poet, the wardrobe department with all its details. The dress for a prima donna sometimes costs £80 to £90.-How many different hands and mouths profit by this transaction alone? There is the scenic artist with all his assistants, spreading out to the oil and color merchant and

rope-maker, the armorer, the gas-man, the with his little army, not to speak of the big property and wig maker; finally the carpenter staff in front of the house. Still, in spite of the expense attaching to all these different accessories, I think I have proved that opera in the vernacular can be made to pay. I do not believe in artistic enterprises, which have no commercial backbone. Art soon flies away if treasury day is not met, and the ghost does not walk.' I have always endeavored to accustom the public to go and hear a work, inthat a singer wanted to be the opera, I have stead of a particular singer, and when I found dispensed with his or her services, however valuable they might have been. I have never tried to deceive the public, as I think it is the greatest possible mistake in a caterer for the public to work under false pretences. Nemesis will surely follow. The difficulty of an impressario lies not with the public; it is in the inside of the watch, with all its little wheels within wheels, that he meets the main difficulties that beset his harassing and ungrateful position."

HENRY VIII. OF ENGLAND.-Mr. Froude has done his best to place Henry VIII. among not only the great men, but also among the good men of history. The Rev. William Stubbs, D.D., late Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, in his recently published Lectures on the Study of Mediaval and Modern History, gives this estimate of the many-mar

ried monarch:

"The grand factor in the whole complication intelligent, self-willed force of the king. Henry [of the Reformation in England], is the strong, VIII. is neither the puppet of parties, nor the victim of circumstances, nor the shifty politician, nor the capricious tyrant, but a man of light and leading, of power, force, and foresight; a man of opportunities and stratagems and surprises, but not the less of iron will and determined purpose; purpose not at once realized or systematized, but widening, deepening, and strengthening as the way opens before it; a man, accordingly, who might have been very great, and could under no circumstances be accounted less than great, but who would have been infinitely greater, and better, and more fortunate, if he would lived for his people and not for himself. I come to the conclusion that Henry VIII. was the master, and in no sense the minister, of his people; and that, where he carried their good will with him, it was by forcing, not by autici

SCIENCE AND PSEUDO

SCIENCE.

action on grounds either of justice, expediency, or good taste?

Establishment has its duties as well In the opening sentences of a con- as its rights. The clergy of a State tribution to the March number of the Church enjoy many advantages over Nineteenth Century, the Duke of those of unprivileged and unendowed Argyll has favored me with a lecture religious persuasions, but they lie on the proprieties of controversy, to under a correlative responsibility to which I should be disposed to listen the state, and to every member of with more docility if his Grace's the body politic. I am not aware that precepts appeared to me to be based any sacredness attaches to sermons. upon rational principles, or if his If preachers stray beyond the doctrinal example were more exemplary. limits set by lay lawyers, the Privy With respect to the latter point, the Council will see to it; and, if they Duke has thought fit to entitle his think fit to use their pulpits for the article "Professor Huxley on Canon promulgation of literary, or historical, Liddon," and thus forces into prom- or scientific errors, it is not only the inence an element of personality which right, but the duty, of the humblest those who read the paper which is the layman, who may happen to be better object of the Duke's animadversions informed, to correct the evil effects of will observe I have endeavored, most such perversion of the opportunities carefully, to avoid. My criticisms which the state affords them and such dealt with a report of a sermon, pub- misuse of the authority which its lished in a newspaper, and thereby support lends them. Whatever else addressed to all the world. Whether it may claim to be, in its relations that sermon was preached by A or B with the state, the Established Church was not a matter of the smallest cou- is a branch of the civil service; and, sequence; and I went out of my way for those who repudiate the ecclesiastito absolve the learned divine to whom cal authority of the clergy, they are the discourse was attributed from the merely civil servants, as much responresponsibility for statements which, sible to the English people for the for anything I knew to the contrary, proper performance of their duties as might contain imperfect, or inaccurate any others. representations of his views. The assertion that I had the wish or was beset by any "temptation to attack" Canon Liddon is simply contrary to

fact.

I denied the justice of the preacher's ascription to men of science of the doctrine that miracles are incredible, because they are violations of natural law; and the Duke of Argyll says that But suppose that if, instead of sedu- he believes my "denial to be well lously avoiding even the appearance of founded. The preacher was answering such attack I had thought it to take a an objection which has now been gendifferent course; suppose that, after erally abandoned." Either the preacher satisfying myself that the eminent knew this or he did not know it. It clergyman whose name is paraded by seems to me, as a mere lay teacher, to the Duke of Argyll had really uttered be a pity that the "great dome of St. the words attributed to him from the Paul's" should have been made to pulpit of St. Paul's, what right would "echo" (if so be that such stentorian any one have to find fault with my effects were really produced) a state