Chapter XXIV: Part II (6)

If any one cares to know what became of the picture, he may be
interested to hear that it hangs now over the altar of a private
oratory in the same city where it was painted. The Greek merchant took
it to Constantinople, where it remained in his family till the siege,
twenty-eight years later. It was then given by him for safe keeping to
his Venetian friend and transferred to Venice, whence the Greek
himself, having become a resident of that place, took it back to
Bruges and offered it to the canon, on condition of no further mention
being made of the circumstances connected with it. The offer was
gratefully accepted, and it remained till the priest’s death in his
private collection, the Greek having declared that, what with having
paid no price for it and its being a Scriptural subject, he preferred
that it should in some way belong to the church rather than to the
world. At the canon’s death it was sold to a dealer, who sold it again
for a high price to an Italian collector, whose descendants, in “hard
times,” parted with it to a rich Englishman. It happened, strangely
enough, that it returned to the native city of its unlucky author by
an intermarriage between the family of the English connoisseur and
that of a passionate lover of art in Bruges, and this time it was
transferred as a _gift_. It has been freely shown to any and every one
who asked to see it, and the story attached to it made it one of the
“sights” of the old city.

WILD ROSES BY THE SEA.

Untrimmed, uncared for, filling all the ways
That stretch between the shadow of the pine
And sea-washed rock where in the soft sunshine
The sea breaks white through all the long June days,

The fair wild roses, flushed like Eastern skies
When sinks the sun to rest in radiance calm,
Their pink bloom lift amid the sweet-bay’s balm
And shine a welcome true to loving eyes.

Sweet June’s rich gladness in the rosy flush,
As if rejoicing with our human souls,
While solemn melody from wave-beat rolls,
Whose endless anthem knows not any hush:

And ever answering from the pines sweep down
The wailing chords the wandering wind doth wake—
Sad undertones that through June’s singing break,
But cannot dim her roses’ radiant crown,

Beyond whose jewelled zone spreads on and on
The long, low level of the endless sea,
Blue with the shadow of infinity
From cloudless skies, in sparkling light, dropped down;

With here and there a sail, in shade and light,
Wind-seeking, bearing careless o’er the crest
Of summer waves the whiteness of its breast—
A moment’s dazzling vision on our sight:

Earth, air, and sea, with mirth unsullied filled,
With happy sunshine from June’s roses flushed.
We hold our rose-leaves all to-day uncrushed,
Our cup of spring-time joyousness unspilled.

But spring-time passes, rosy petals all
Drop down and mingle with earth’s earlier dead,
Though faithful sweet-bay still breathes balm o’erhead,
And ocean’s anthem e’er doth rise and fall.

Almost unfelt the summer hours die,
Green leaves grow russet on the salty shore,
The crimson vines droop rocky crevice o’er,
And wild ducks’ marshalled columns southward fly.

Low asters gleam with delicate light amid
The massive sunshine of the golden-rod;
A stray Houstonia shines above the sod
And lifts to gold-spun skies its pale blue lid.

The autumn’s glory lavishly is spread,
But summer dieth, loving sung to sleep
By western wind and murmur of the deep,
The softened sunshine on her gently shed.

Where are our roses?—that rare gift of June
That filled to perfectness our human life,
That hushed with silent touch all earthly strife,
That voiceless sang to keep our hearts in tune.

Lo! crowning each rich, sun-browned stem
Where once its rose the summer’s sunrise flushed,
Where shone our coronal of joy, now crushed,
Stands, round and firm, a deeper-tinted gem.

Rich summer faileth, and true-hearted June,
For whom birds sang, and perfect blessedness
Filled every grass-blade with a sense of bliss,
Tells o’er her beads for one to die so soon.

Her rosary strung around the rose-crowned shore,
Our pure June gladness, gathered into prayers,
The sweet-bay’s incense ever upward bears,
While we, 'mid loss, seem richer than before!

DIVORCE, AND DIVORCE LAWS.

Of the many evils now arrayed against society, none is greater than that threatened by the frequency and facility with which divorces are obtained. This bane of our day, if not plucked up by the roots, will inevitably bring on the country disasters tenfold greater than the bitterest political strifes. Already its incursions into our midst have cast a blight on our morals, have infected all classes of society, have rudely shaken our best institutions, and, if not checked, will prove a greater scourge than in our apathy we dream of. Yet it continues to grow among us day by day; it rears its head higher and higher each moment; it strikes deeper root on all sides; its hideous mien is ever becoming more familiar to us; some even smile over its attendant disclosures of depravity as pleasant tidbits of scandal with which the morning papers agreeably enliven the breakfast-table, while few reflect over the awful magnitude of the danger with which it is fraught. So dulled, indeed, has become the public conscience in this respect, so slow its apprehension of the mighty evil pressing on us, that scarcely has a warning voice been lifted against this social hydra, which goes on tightening its coils more closely around us every moment. It is not alone our crowded cities that are poisoned by its breath, but it has invaded the stillness of hillside and hamlet, and no part of the land is a stranger to its presence.

In olden times a special act of Parliament was required in England to legalize a remarriage during the life-time of husbands and wives, but so tedious and expensive was the proceeding that few cared to avail themselves of the privilege; whereas of late days and in our land so simple and easy has become the severance of the marriage-knot that the mechanic as well as the millionaire figures before courts and referees, and multitudes now throng this new high-road to social ruin.

Chief among the evils resulting from the laxity of our divorce laws is their active warfare against society. The family, as known among us, is a creation of the church wrought out through the indissolubility and sacredness of marriage. It is the nursery of society, the hope of the state, and the cradle of its destinies. While it remains pure and intact, so long will our sound social institutions flourish, so long will a healthy public sentiment live among us, ready to rebuke the shortcomings of the powerful and to lighten the burdens of the poor, to frown upon official corruption and to encourage disinterested public action. Indeed, this is a point we need scarcely insist upon. All moralists and sociologists allow that the family is the parent of society, as the seed is of the crop and the acorn of the oak. They agree that with its extinction we are at once driven on the breakers of socialism, communism, and free-love—in a word, that society ceases to exist. Now, divorce is the entering-wedge which the law supplies for the ruin of the family; it is as the priming to a loaded gun. Once give the world to understand that marriage is but a simple compact by which two persons of opposite sexes agree to live together conditionally for a time, and the permanency of the family is destroyed; the sacredness of conjugal love is degraded before the law into mere sexual desire; that institution which Christ blessed and declared to symbolize his own union with the church becomes at the best a system of stirpiculture, and nuptial altars are converted into shambles of licentiousness. Let the cause be what it may bestowing on either party to the marriage contract the right to annul it, and the cohesion of family ties is fatally weakened. This fact our court records ominously demonstrate every day. Applications for divorce, based on the special enactments of each State, are constantly filed, in which release from marriage is sought in accordance with the provisions of the law. In Indiana, for instance, mere incompatibility of temper is made the ground of petition; and in only very few cases do we find adultery or grossly cruel treatment alleged as a reason. The easier conditions of the State law are naturally enough invoked, whatever may be the true inner grounds of disagreement. The law of the State offers a means of escape from an onerous condition, and, either through the perverse temper of the litigants or the legal skill of counsel, the circumstances of the case are readily adapted to the requirements of the law. Thus the law in reality supplies to those who are weary of wedlock the means of escaping from it, while apparently striving to hedge in its interests. This fact will for ever and essentially stultify divorce laws. No matter how ingeniously framed they may be, how buttressed with conditions and exactions of proof, such are the peculiar relations of married life that, given on the side of the law the possibility, and on the side of the husband or wife the desire of escaping from a yoke that has become galling, and mere legal restrictions melt as wax before the sun.

As has just been said, the court records constantly prove this. Let us examine the facts in New York State, where adultery is the only recognized ground on which absolute divorce can be procured. A husband desires to free himself from married thraldom. He consults a convenient friend or an accommodating lawyer. (Happily, there are not many such, but we all know that one can work an infinity of mischief.) A conspiracy is entered into against the wife; detectives are set on her track; her incomings and outgoings are narrowly watched; her innocent visits are painted over with the color of criminality; her letters are intercepted; she is lured into the paths of temptation; and such proof, devised with devilish cunning, is soon obtained as brands that woman with the most infamous of crimes. The picture is not of the imagination; the revelations of the law attest its terrible reality every day, and so defiant of public opinion have some discreditable practitioners become that they take no pains to cover up the tracks of their infamy. Indeed, it was with something like surprise that a short time ago a lawyer in New York City listened to the scathing words which debarred him from future practice in our courts, because of his participation in a conspiracy to prove an innocent woman an adulteress.

Circumstantial evidence is all that the law requires in these cases. As a rule, indeed, none other can be furnished. Now, this evidence, proposing to establish what is after all but the semblance of crime, since the facts necessarily elude ocular proof, is such that by asking for it the law seems to invite those who are desirous of so doing to weave around innocence itself a web of circumstances calculated to immesh it in the appearance of guilt. Thus the law defeats its own intent and places a premium on sin. It aggravates the evil it endeavors to estop. Like the smitten eagle, it is forced to—

“View its own feathers on the fatal dart
Which winged the shaft that quivers in its heart.
Keen are its pangs, but keener far to feel
_It nursed the pinion that impelled the steel_.”

Two hundred divorces _a vinculo_, obtained in the State of New York in the course of a single year, give point to these remarks. And in most of these cases, it must be remembered, the defendants denied the charge and were convicted only by such evidence as, though necessarily deemed sufficient by the court or referee, is essentially and of its nature such that it might have been manufactured. But if these attempts on the part of husbands to take advantage of the laxity of our divorce laws by blasting the character of their wives excite our honest indignation and disgust, infinitely more heinous must appear the conduct of some wives in their efforts to procure evidence against their husbands. Our readers must here pardon a few details which the cause of truth compels us to set down, but which we will couch in as few and modest words as possible. What we are about to state proves the truth of the holy proverb that when woman falls “her feet go down into death, and her steps go in as far as hell” (Prov. v. 5). There is a fashionable physiology which denies the physical possibility of absolute continence without serious impairment of health. The easy votaries of sensuality do not hesitate to uphold this odious doctrine in so-called scientific treatises, and to proclaim with Dr. Draper that “public celibacy is private wickedness.” We call this fashionable physiology; for the mass of intelligent non-Catholics make open avowal of it. Indeed, the doctrine is essentially non-Catholic, and has been acted upon by all rebels against the church from Luther to Loyson. Swedenborg condemns celibacy as a crime against nature. From being a purely religious doctrine, however, it has recently come to be regarded as a scientific tenet. Pseudo-science now shelters it under its ægis, and it is as much the vogue to believe in it as it is to accept the other views of so-called advanced modern scientists. It is this very notion which supplies to many a recalcitrant wife the weapon with which she has succeeded in breaking down the law and bringing irretrievable ruin on her family. If, as the writer has taken pains to assure himself, the inner history of our most notorious and disgraceful divorce cases could be read in the light of broad day, the facts would appears as follows:

A faithless wife, impressed with the doctrine just stated, takes such steps as will, in her belief, compel her husband to compromise himself. He then is watched, snares are set about his feet, he is encompassed by enemies, and, alas! sharing as he does the views entertained by his wife, he soon furnishes such evidences of wrong-doing as justify a recourse to legal proceedings. We have stated the case briefly, but at sufficient length to indicate the lowness of the depths to which human nature, deprived of grace, can sink, and how ingeniously the law has constructed a pitfall for itself. One author says that “such stratagems are of frequent occurrence,” and the mournful testimony of our tribunals is overwhelming in proof of the appalling frequency with which this repulsive drama is enacted. But to wade through the putrescent mass of evidence were to make the cheek grow crimson and burn, so that a scant allusion to it is all that decency can permit. What we especially desire to impress upon our readers is the fact that the imagination is here powerless to compete with the reality, and that human ingenuity has exhausted itself in the contrivance of the most abominable devices in its successful efforts to overreach a stupid law. But it is not alone in thus inviting infraction of its provisions that the law of New York State is weak and faulty; it is, in addition, guilty of contradicting itself in a matter of vital importance. Marriage is either a contract for life or can be limited by previous mutual consent. Now, the law denounces such limitation as immoral and strictly forbids it. But does it therefore recognize marriage as in reality a contract for life? We emphatically answer in the negative, and for the following reason: It is of the nature of a contract that all its essential terms and conditions be such as to come within the jurisdiction of the authority appointed for the purpose of directing its fulfilment. But if the authority be so crippled as not to be able to take cognizance of conditions admitted to be essential to the proper fulfilment of the contract, the latter must be regarded as null and void, or binding only _in foro interno_. All outside authority, all outside jurisdiction over it, is at an end. This is precisely what happens in civil marriage. Ostensibly the law recognizes it as a contract for life; indeed, openly proclaims it to be so; even provides a penalty for its violation as such; and yet, by admitting its dissolubility on certain conditions, leaves it in reality as much the subject-matter of temporary stipulation as a lease or a business copartnership, and, in addition, baits it with the temptation to commit an enormous crime. What is there to prevent two persons from entering into a civil marriage with the understanding that they should live together for a certain time, be as other married persons before the law, sharing its protection and enjoying its privileges, and then separate by complying with the conditions on which the law allows a separation? The case is entirely possible—has, indeed, occurred time and again—so that we are forced to admit that among us the law virtually treats marriage as a temporary partnership, however much it may insist upon its being regarded as a life-long contract, and is thus guilty of the inconsistency of declaring a certain thing to be what it in reality treats as quite another.

Nor can it be contended, as against this argument, that the law will not grant a divorce where connivance is attempted; for the case, typical of thousands, supposes that neither party desires to reveal such connivance. Nor is it of any avail to affirm that the party proved to be guilty is debarred the right of contracting a new marriage. Technically the law so reads, but practically it is powerless to enforce its provision. In such a case, indeed, it may be said that love laughs law to scorn. Its hope to punish a transgressor of the sort is as futile as the

“Desire of the moth for the star.”

It is proper to assume that the purpose of the law is to punish the criminal partner and to restore to the injured one privileges which ought not to be forfeited because of another’s guilt. These two objects represent the policy and expediency of the law; and in view of its entire failure to work them out wisely and effectually, we will show that the law is neither politic nor expedient. We will grant, indeed, that the law is competent, in all cases coming under its notice, both to punish the wrong-doer and partially to redress the wrong; but what is the use, if, instead of effectually repressing the wrong, it tends rather to encourage its commission? And such is indeed the anomalous condition of the law, both as it reads and as it works. The easier and more numerous the terms on which the marriage contract can be dissolved, the greater, of course, will be the number of divorces sought; but whether it be for one reason or many, once given a gateway from marriage bonds, and none who are desirous of escape will find much trouble in passing through the portals which the law has flung open. The facts, as attested by the courts of Connecticut and Indiana, prove the truth of the first part of this proposition; for nowhere are cases looking to the absolute severance of the marriage tie more frequently argued, and in no other States are so many divorces granted. The reason obviously is because the conditions for obtaining such concessions are there easiest of all. Where the conditions for procuring divorce are more onerous fewer applications are made; and the facts, as occurring in New York State, verify this sum in proportion and thus prove the second part of our proposition.

In the State of New York adultery is the sole condition of divorce, and just in proportion as such a crime is less frequent than mere family jars and broils, so are divorces less frequently sought. The proposition is therefore true that the permission to dissolve marriage begets a demand to that effect in proportion to the ease with which it may be obtained. The corollary of this proposition is that, the more easily divorce may be obtained, the less regard is had to the obstacles which may stand in the way of its coming at our beck. Should marriage be declared to be absolutely indissoluble, and come to be viewed as such by the masses, few would dream of assuming its responsibilities in the hope that, should time render it irksome, they could slip the noose and again soar “in maiden meditation fancy free.” On the other hand, they would be disposed rather to approach the matter with deliberation, to take to heart the conditions of the contract, and seriously to study the surroundings of a state which is to endure till death. It is for this reason that the church advises her children to ponder long and deeply the consequences of the step they are about to take when proposing to cross this moral Rubicon. If Cæsar felt that, the traditionary river once crossed, fate had marked him for her own, or Cortez that, his ships ablaze, all hope of return was gone, more still does the church insist that sacramental marriage is a step that cannot be retraced. Divorce laws ignore these considerations, and make light thereby of that social institution on which all others depend for their perpetuity. They forget that—

“Marriage is a matter of more worth
Than to be dealt in by attorneyship.”

With siren voice they lure the unwary and unreflecting to a fate fraught with untold possibilities of unhappiness. The result is that persons take less account of the solemn nature of the contract. It suits their humor at the moment to get married, and little they reck of the future. _Carpe diem._ The rosy present bounds the view, and there is no thought of to-morrow. Time enough for the disillusioned groom to wail:

_Miseri quibus intentata nites_—

when “marriage vows have proved as false as dicers’ oaths,” and bitter hate succeeded the short-lived joys of the honeymoon. And why should it be otherwise? Is not the potent panacea of matrimonial ills ever within ken and reach? What need is there to cloud the golden prospect with thoughts of possible future wrangles and rancor, and in advance study to avert or mitigate them, since, should they come along, a benignant law is at hand to end them? We are convinced on the best of grounds that the frequency of divorce suits has its root in the neglect of duly considering the conditions essential to the happiness of married life. Were Dante’s words written over marriage portals:

_Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’intrate,_

a deal of curious prying, at least, would precede the decisive steps and few would rashly fly to a “bourn whence no traveller returns.” But when the law points to an easy escape from the consequences of a heedless step, what necessity can there be for heeding? Plenty of prior deliberation and a close scrutiny of its obligations would not have failed to render marriage tolerable, at least, for many who now fret and fume 'neath its galling yoke because they had flown to it in a wanton hour as to a flower to gather sweets from. _Festina lente_—or, as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly translates it, “Celerity should be contempered with cunctation”—would be a valuable maxim to hold up to the giddy gaze of our modern youth who woo and wed with more sentimental sighs than sober sense; better, by all means, than the cynical “Don’t” of Douglas Jerrold. The knowledge that what God hath joined together no human authority must put asunder, alone can stop those unhallowed unions which curse society by the filthy disclosures they occasion, and blast the happiness, both temporal and eternal, of so many.

At the time when this question was widely discussed in England, and so many eminent authorities opposed the project of law which now rules in the British realms, and which is in the main identical with our own State law, Lord Stowell held the following language, which goes at once to the kernel of the matter and shows a keen appreciation of the worst results of easy divorce. He says: “The general happiness of the married life is secured by its indissolubility. When people understand that they must live together, except for a very few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften, by mutual accommodation, that yoke which they know they cannot shake off; they become good husbands and good wives; for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties it imposes.” The church in surrounding marriage with that solemnity which it possesses in the eyes of Catholics, and thus giving greater prominence to its indissoluble character, has thereby supplied to her children the means of softening a union so binding, and from the crucible of suffering offers to both husband and wife a purer gold. In the schedule of conditions essential to the procurement of the best results from marriage she holds to our gaze a larger and deeper culture than current philosophy dreams of—a culture that appeals to the intellect through moral sense, unlike that modern culture which is addressed to the intellect alone. It has almost passed into an axiom in political economy that self must sink out of sight where the interests of many are concerned; and so the church teaches that men and women, having reached that period when the duties of married life ought to be assumed, should thenceforth devote to the service of society those labors they had hitherto bestowed on the prosecution of their individual aims. The culture proceeds from this. Tolerance of each other’s shortcomings on the part of husband and wife is strongly inculcated. A gentle forbearance of mutual peculiarities is enjoined, whereby the noble disposition to forgive the countless trifles of manner, thought, and action which might offend a morbid or fastidious idiosyncrasy is fostered. Thus the Catholic wife or husband, in view of the indissoluble nature of marriage, is taught to round off angularities, to tolerate oddities, to adapt individual views and feelings to special requirements, and to hold all subject to that higher and holier law which tells us that self should not be consulted where duty is concerned.

How many bickerings and misunderstandings, how many of the heart-burnings, how much of all the unhappiness that now mars and disfigures married life, might be avoided if these large and liberal views more generally prevailed! Petty jealousies, the offspring of our baser nature; furtive suspicions, exaggeration of faults, imputation of wrong motives, misinterpretation of harmless actions—in a word, the hundred-and-one incentives to disagreement which beset each day’s path—could find no room in a household harboring this pure and enlightened conception of marriage. We know that the will is as much the subject of discipline as the intellect, and we likewise know that as it is tried, as temptations beset it and are repelled, as suffering is endured without repining, as petty torments, numerous in proportion to their smallness, are patiently borne, the whole character comes forth from the ordeal smoother, sweeter, more spiritual, and stronger, with a life that is not likely to die. Marriage, rightly conceived, is a training-school where many salutary lessons are taught. Its tendency is to strengthen the will, to soften the heart, to remove asperities of character, to evoke the tender and gentle in our nature, and to beget a happiness all its own. Wrongly understood and blindly sought, it is full of perils, not, indeed, imaginary, but real with that terrible reality which court calendars daily reveal in sickening colors.

Thus the standard by which the Catholic Church measures marriage makes it yield a higher culture, more generous, large, and abiding, than can flow from the gross conception which represents it as a contract to be rescinded at will. The Catholic view promotes among the married that freedom of action which loves to borrow the consciousness of doing right from the conviction that the right is freely courted and the wrong freely spurned, and thus paves the way for a nobler plane of conduct. That irritability which inheres so deeply in our nature is what unfits most of us for companionship. It seeks to fasten on others the blame which is our own, or holds them responsible for grievances which are the necessary outcome of human life. If not controlled, it either causes entire estrangement and forfeiture of affection, or leads those towards whom it is manifested to deceptiveness and the employment of crooked ways to reach legitimate ends. A narrow and illiberal life is the result. Darkness and trickery prevail where all should be light and freedom. Evil accumulates on evil, till both parties seek through divorce to free themselves from a yoke that has become intolerable. The shrew will nag and the tyrant husband domineer because a narrow selfishness, bred of this unrestrained irritability, has usurped the place of a large-hearted and gentle forbearance. The knowledge of these possibilities is the most effective armor against their actual occurrence; for it demonstrates in advance the necessity of patience and a tolerant spirit; it hints at a delicate regard for the feelings of others; it leads to a vivid introspection of self, and inclines to a mezzotint view of actions not our own; it discriminates between true love, which is self-sacrificing, gentle, and forgiving, and the counterfeit presentment of love, which is lurid passion, fire without light. And this knowledge is best guaranteed by the conviction that marriage is indissoluble. Urging this view of marriage and the study of these things, the church implicitly holds that a liberal toleration of individual action is essential to the happiness of married life, and that the ignorance which accompanies intolerance must be dispelled ere the ideal picture of married bliss can meet the gaze. Thus Christian freedom goes by the golden mean, on one side of which is domestic tyranny and on the other the rampant license of immorality. Unlike the generality of guides, however the church possesses the means of enforcing her enlightened views, of imparting wise counsel, and offering helpful advice in concrete cases through the Sacrament of Penance. Those who have derived their notion of the confessional from the scurrilous writings of Michelet, the senseless diatribes of Gavazzi, or the eminently vulgar flings of some sensational preachers will be a little startled by this proposition. But let those whose knowledge of the tribunal of penance has been fashioned in the school of bigotry and ignorance consult any intelligent Catholic, husband or wife, and they will find that the web of falsehood in which they have been caught is such that they should blush at their own simplicity for having become entangled in it and held “faster than gnats in cobwebs.” They will find that all those virtues which, even to the commonest understanding, shine clearly forth as the basis of contentment in married life, are here inculcated; that here on the heat and flame of distemper cool patience is sprinkled; that chafes are healed and rankling barbs plucked out; and that magnanimity, self-sacrifice, and love brighten afresh at the latticed crate of the confessional.

But notwithstanding that the church has exhausted prudence and employed every means which common sense could suggest in compassing the integrity of marriage, she seeks not in these the _ultima ratio_ of her action. To her marriage is a sacrament, bestowing grace on those who approach it worthily, and sealing married life with a supernatural impress. This sacramental notion of marriage it is which elevates, purifies, and sanctifies the relation, enables the church to mitigate the evils with which human perversity leavens it, and gives her control where the most restless plotters for the regeneration of society have acknowledged their utter powerlessness to act.

During the controversy which marked the adoption of the Divorce Bill in England its opponents, when twitted with their inconsistency in rejecting the Catholic notion of marriage as a sacrament and still insisting upon its inherent indissolubility, fell, through their reply, into an error which, in proportion to its prevalence, has led to a wide-spread misconception of the grounds on which the Catholic Church claims marriage to be indissoluble. A prominent writer at the time said: “The opinion of the Roman Church itself does not found the indissolubility of marriage on its character as a sacrament, but only conceives the obligation to be enhanced by that circumstance”; and in confirmation of the assertion he quotes the words of the Council of Trent, which are to this effect: _Matrimonium, ut naturæ officium consideratur et maxime ut sacramentum, dissolvi non potest._ Now, if the words _ut maxime_ be allowed to bear their proper meaning, they certainly prove that the Tridentine fathers intended that the indissolubility of marriage should, before all and above all, rest upon and grow out of the sacramental character of the contract. _Ut maxime_, if meaning anything, means _as far as it is possible, pre-eminently_; and so the church regards marriage as naturally indissoluble, but especially so when viewed as a sacrament. The fact proves that the opponents of the bill had little else to fall back on than the falsely-advanced statement that the Catholic Church, the most strenuous advocate of indissolubility, sought the reason of her opinion in the nature of the contract rather than in the character of the sacrament.

But, apart from the declaration of the Council of Trent, the whole history of the church exhibits beyond peradventure her higher estimate of marriage as a sacrament rather than as a contract. She holds it to be, in a mystical sense, the symbol of our Lord’s union with the church, and surely no higher character could attach to it. But this symbolic meaning of marriage rests altogether on its sacramental phase, so that the church views it as a sacrament supernaturally, as a contract naturally, her higher regard for it being in the former sense. The English indissolubilists, therefore, could in no manner object to the proposed Divorce Bill; for, denying marriage to be a sacrament, they surrendered the strongest reason for proclaiming it to be indissoluble. If, as even Gibbon admits, the church has lifted woman from the lowest degradation into which she could be plunged, in which she was the mere slave of man and the toy of his passions, to her present position of respect and independence by investing matrimony with the holiness of a sacrament; and if the church has by the same means purified home-life and cemented its affections, is there not danger that, by dragging down marriage from its high estate, woman may again come to be regarded “not as a _person_,” as Gibbon says, “but as a _thing_, so that, if the original title were deficient, she might be claimed, like other valuables, by the use and possession of an entire year”? Such was the law in pagan times, and such it may be again if we list too readily to those modern renovators of society who call marriage tyranny and a “system of legalized prostitution.” Not in vain did St. Simon, Fourier, Le Roux, Fanny Wright, and their co-workers inveigh against Christian marriage. We are now reaping the fruits of their unholy crusade against it. Their labors are to-day blossoming in Oneida County as well as in Utah, in the general rush all round to snap uncongenial ties, and in the woful spread of an evil too base to be mentioned. These form the goal to which such pestilent agitations tend; and if some well-meaning advocates of innovation have not kept step with the leaders, it is not because their principles restrained them, but rather because they have not quite broken away from the influence of early teachings. Marriage, once stripped of its supernatural character, and reduced to the level of a contract, becomes as much the subject-matter of speculation as political systems. Reformers object to this feature of it or to that, and suggest endless modifications. Plato contended that there should be no such thing as marriage proper, and that all children should be surrendered to the state. To-day, in the light which the Gospel has shed on the question, civilized states tolerate a condition akin to that which the Athenian philosopher advocated. And just as Plato, by the sheer force of his commanding intellect, imposed his views on many both in his own time and subsequently, so, it is to be regretted, the skill and eloquence of some modern opponents of marriage are such that they have succeeded in winning hundreds to their standard.

It is a law of our nature that great intellectual force is never unproductive; that it triumphs over many obstacles; and, no matter what may be the cause on the side of which its influence is cast, it is always attended with at least partial success in the achievement of its aims. Now, we have witnessed the most strenuous efforts of powerful minds enlisted in the attempt to abolish marriage. We have had eloquent pleas for socialism, phalansterianism, etc., and it could not but be that these labors were destined to bear issue of some sort. That issue we are contemplating at the present moment; for these assaults on marriage have lowered the general conception of its obligations, its sanctity, and its importance to society. They have lured to a mere mockery hundreds who, when scarce the marriage-kiss has impressed their lips, besiege our courts with petitions for divorce. The influence of pernicious doctrines is deeper and wider than their authors imagine. It does not consist alone in the fact that they draw disciples and beget neophytes; but they weaken faith in what they assail, and thus engender the most pitiful lot of man—scepticism. This is precisely what we now complain of. Our neighbors round about us emphatically eschew the doctrines of the _illuminati_, of Heine and of Prudhomme, yet they more or less admit that there is some reason in what has been so well said, so forcibly and so eloquently urged. The consequence is that their faith in the true order of things is shaken; they are dissatisfied; they declare the doctrine of indissolubility to be rigoristic; and, provocation given, qualms are brushed aside and they hesitate not to fly to the ready remedy of the law. We may thus set down to the erratic speculations of a few self-appointed social reconstructionists many of the matrimonial miseries and scandals we now deplore. And the leaven is working not alone in the United States, but in every country where the same low estimate of marriage prevails, and where the law is the ready tool of those who desire escape from shackles of their own forging.

In England, where law machinery is more cumbersome than among us and its processes more tedious, not quite so many divorces are obtained, but still the number is on the increase. The English law is much the same as that which rules in New York State, and it is interesting to inquire what reason there can be for the greater percentage of divorces in New York than in England. We hinted that the administration of English law is slower, but that fact is not sufficient to account for a difference so marked. All the influences already enumerated as tending to favor the multiplicity of divorces are as actively at work over there as among ourselves, and hence we must strive to find the explanation of the difference in the different character of the social systems of the two countries. In England society is stratified with such extreme nicety that seldom, if ever, a waif is borne from one stratum to another. Lines are sharply drawn between classes, and the fact is well recognized; for the lowly do not seek to soar, nor do the higher ever entirely lose their social grade. Hence marriages are contracted only between those whose tastes by birth and education agree, whose general views are more apt to harmonize, and whose sympathies mainly run in the same channels. They come to the altar (we employ the word in its current sense) with a better understanding of what each expects from the other, with fewer doubts to frighten them and stronger hopes to sustain them, and hence subsequent collisions and estrangements are less frequent. In our country society has not quite passed out of its formative stage, the elements have not settled into their allotted planes. It still is like an estuary in which the conflict of opposing tides brings to the surface what had just lain at the bottom, and drives to the bottom the bead that had glistened for a moment on the brimming top; in a word, social stratification is not yet complete among us. The result is a tendency to the intermingling of incongruous forces. In the social ferment which is going on some rise suddenly from a lower depth and crystallize in their new plane by marriage, some fall and remain below on the same condition. Here wealth is a potent escort to lead its possessors higher up than they could hope to reach without the aid of this glittering talisman. A little veneer and a resolute lack of shamefacedness often enable those whom suddenly-acquired riches have lifted above their former level to hold their new station till marriage has assured it to them and given them a title to their position. But rapidly as wealth lifts in the social scale, more rapidly still does poverty drag down, and we have not yet fully developed, though happily we are fast coming to it, that public sentiment which refuses to behold loss of caste in loss of wealth. Till then a lower social level is the certain bourn of those who have fallen from opulence, just as a niche higher up in the social temple awaits the _nouveau riche_.

We are not sticklers for the social classification of aristocratic countries, but simply for that which is founded on cultivated taste, refinement, and general intelligence; and we contend that where the social condition is such as to permit the barriers between vulgarity and refinement to be broken down, no matter though the former may vie with Crœsus or the latter appear in the tattered garb of Lazarus, matrimonial misalliances will be the result. December and May are no more fitly mated than platinum and lead—_i.e._, sixteen and fifty make no more suitable alliance than refinement and its opposite.

“For in companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose lives do bear an equal yoke of love,
There must be needs a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit.”

—_Merchant of Venice._

Till, therefore, this social ferment has settled and all the elements have reached their allotted planes, there to remain, misalliances will continue to occur, and misalliances, we know, are a fruitful source of separation. There may be more satisfactory and truthful explanations of the fact we are endeavoring to account for, but of this we are convinced: that, for whatever cause, antagonistic social conditions operate more frequently against happiness in married life in this country than in Europe.

Space will not allow us to pursue the discussion of this question much farther, so we will devote the few remaining lines to the consideration of the leading objection which is constantly urged against absolute indissolubility, and which may consequently be taken as a strong argument in favor of divorce. Divorce, it is contended, favors morality; for, whether law intervenes or not, passion will assert its supremacy, and it is better to let those depart in peace and with the sanction of the law who cannot live together than have them burst their bonds illegally and contract new relations in despite of the law. By so permitting, the advocates of divorce hope to stem the torrent of evil which they say deluges some European continental nations where the proportion of illegitimate births is wofully excessive. The same thing, they maintain, is especially true of Spain, Italy, and, in a word, of all Catholic countries. Wherever divorce is not sanctioned by law dissoluteness, they affirm, is far greater than where divorces are granted. So the statistics seem to prove; and, in a spasm of virtue, believers in mere statistical figures denounce indissolubility as a stepping-stone to lust. We will grant the reliability of statistical reports for the nonce, and prove by them that, so far from immorality abounding in those countries where divorces are prohibited, a greater amount of immorality really exists in divorce countries, with the added immorality of a law which cloaks it. We know that passion, blind and impetuous, is the reigning force which orders the actions of those who contemplate emancipation from marriage bonds. Certainly they do not act under the inspiration of grace. When, therefore, they break loose from their unsuiting partners, it matters little to them whether the law approves or disapproves of their action, provided they can act with impunity. This impunity is guaranteed in most cases in countries where divorce is permitted, and new marriages, having all the seemingness of virtue, are contracted with the sanction of the law. In Catholic countries this is not permitted; new post-marital relations are branded as adulterous and their issue illegitimate. Is it any wonder, then, that illegitimacy is more prevalent in those countries where divorce is unknown than where caprice or crime can sever old bonds and weld new ones, all with the countenance of the law?

The only difference is that adultery and its consequences are called by their proper names in the former case, whereas in the latter an anti-Scriptural law retrieves them from stigma. And as there is in the human heart a disposition to do more frequently and more extensively what the law allows than what it prohibits, we may be sure that there are many more pseudo-marriages contracted in countries where divorce is permitted than there are adulteries where it is prohibited. Were, then, the mask of the law removed, we should find in the former more infamy and crime than even in those Catholic countries where the record of morality is lowest. There is one Catholic country in which divorce is a thing known only in name, and yet where even the illegitimacy which affects not to seek shelter behind the law is very much less than in the adjoining country, where divorces are frequently obtained. In Ireland the courts are most rarely troubled with such applications, and yet illicit relations on the part of married persons are fewer than in any country of Europe. Does not this fact evidently disprove the claim that absolute indissolubility is unfavorable to morality? While the Catholic Church holds to view on the one hand the indissolubility of marriage, and on the other the precept of conjugal chastity, and while even in one country she has established a higher rate of morality under those rigid conditions, it is evident her wisdom in this trying matter has been attested by the facts.

But the attempt to bolster up divorce morality by an appeal to statistics is radically wrong. It is based on the supposition that the end justifies the means; that it is better, for the sake of avoiding the scandals incident to adulterous cohabitation, to legalize it, and thus exhibit to the eyes of society a whitened sepulchre rather than hold to view the rottenness of “an enseamed bed.” It is the duty of moralists and teachers of religion rather to stem the torrent of vice and pluck the brand from the burning than attempt to cloak over and extenuate by legal devices what is essentially and for ever wrong. There are times, indeed, when separation is the only hope for two unfortunates whom an unlucky fate had thrown in each other’s way; but separation does not imply remarriage, and theirs it is, while reaping the fruits of an enforced singleness, to reflect that they are answerable for the consequences of their own deliberate action, while their case may serve as an example to others. Let the beautiful conception of Christian marriage more abound; let men and women learn to view marriage as something holy, in which the husband is the protector, the wife the comforter, and we may meet with more marriages in which, while the husband faithfully performs his allotted _rôle_, the wife embodies the beautiful picture of her drawn by Washington Irving: “As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and has been lifted by it in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so it is beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.”

FROM THE HECUBA OF EURIPIDES.
_A free translation._
BY AUBREY DE VERE.

[_The Chorus laments the Judgment of Paris._]

STROPHE.

My doom was sealed, my lot decided,
Not now, not now, but long ago,
When first the all-beauteous Dardan boy,
By that pernicious goddess guided,
Laid Ida’s stateliest pinewood low,
And built his ships, and sailed from Troy,
To seek her gift—the richest, rarest—
That wife most fatal; yet the fairest.

ANTISTROPHE.

A netted deer our country lies:
One sinned; and all partook his ruin!
O fatal, fatal was the hour,
Fatal the contest and the prize
How ill adjudged for my undoing,
When in green Ida’s mountain bower
That awful Three—my bane—contended:
Even then our golden reign was ended.

EPODE.

And haply some Achaian bride
Even now, by far Eurotas’ wave,
Widowed like me, like me is mourning!
Perhaps some mother by her side
Laments for those she could not save,
The early lost, and unreturning;
Raising her withered hand to tear
Her last thin locks of whitening hair.

SIX SUNNY MONTHS.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE OF YORKE,” “GRAPES AND THORNS,” ETC.