beloved, she passes her life in burning sacred incense and in intoxicating herself with profane: only the time which is devoted to the creature is much longer than that which is given to the

creator.

The women of the PORTUGUESE COLONIES resemble those of the mother country.

A lady living in one of the most populous villages near Funchal, told a friend of the author of Rambles in Madeira, that "she believed that not a single woman, meaning of the peasantry in her parish, lived with her husband. If this state

ment be any thing near true, it presents a strange picture of manners, and such as one would hardly think the existence of it compatible with the fulfilment of the general purposes of society. With us, there is no doubt such corruption would lead to the most frightful disorders-whereas here things seem to go on much as elsewhere; external decency is always consulted-more uniformly perhaps than in countries of stricter practice; and what is more inexplicable, the domestic affections do not seem to suffer essentially from a perversion which one would think must have poisoned the sentiment in its source."

From all, then, that we have said, infidelity appears pretty much the same among the Russians,

Poles, English, Germans, Prussians, Austrians, French, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese, as among the Spartans, according to Plutarch, and the Athenians, according to Xenophon; and no where can any other artificial cause be assigned for this than indissoluble marriage and its attendant evils.

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PART VI.

DIVORCE.

FEW, perhaps, are ignorant that "It is not enough that a woman is lawfully contracted and led home to the house of her husband, for these circumstances are only the signs of a marriage, but do not constitute one: the man and woman must both be capable of the first duty of marriage. Hence Justinian in his Institutes has decreed, that if such a woman loses her husband before she is properly viripotens, she was never lawfully a wife."-The law of England adopts this principle in effect.

It is impossible too strongly to condemn "the practice of men marrying young and healthy women, when they know that they have incapacitated themselves by their debaucheries . . . It is the duty of women to expose men who put a cheat upon the unsuspecting of the female sex; for in the Spiritual Court, impossibilitas officii, by a received maxim, solvit vinculum conjugii."

It matters not that a mere state of mind is the "In the affair of the Earl of Essex

cause of this. and the Lady Frances Howard, in the reign of James the First, it was evidently, as Archbishop Abbot told the king, vitium animi, non corporis.”

In treating of Marriage, in Part III, I was obliged to sketch the general principles of Divorce, because no correct notion of the former can be formed without referring to the modifications and limits which it undergoes from the latter.

Dividing divorce into divorce properly so called and repudiation, I there showed that, where children do not exist, all consideration of the propriety of divorce belongs to two independent beings, whose free and full consent can alone, with any justice, be required in that act; and that, in repudiation or separation with the consent of one party and without that of the other, if children be still absent, it is at most necessary that the repudiated party be fairly defended, and that justice be attained.

I appended the observation that neither divorce nor repudiation ought to be permitted until after a temporary separation of such duration, as shall prove that no progeny is likely to be the result of the marriage; and that it should be remembered that childless marriages of long duration are not the interest either of individuals or of society.

I next showed that the existence of children greatly modifies divorce and repudiation, and ought unquestionably to enhance their difficulty; that children constitute a third party to which the first and second have voluntarily surrendered some portion of their independence, a party which, as it is helpless, demands the interference of a fourth party in society; and that the new relations thus produced, indicate the mode of procedure required—the new interests to be satisfied.

I observed that, from this, it seems evident that divorce and repudiation where children exist, ought not to be permitted until the children have attained such age that they cannot materially suffer by the separation of those who have produced them, or by the desertion of either of them; that such is the indication of justice which nature affords; that the precise age which children must attain, in order to permit divorce between their parents, must be a subject for due consideration; and that the child's being able to provide for itself being an essential condition, will give a greater motive to the parent desiring to separate properly to educate it.

In reply also, to the objection, that the refusal of divorce during any period so long as to answer this purpose, would be a severe infliction on the parents, I observed that this was the natural con

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