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well adapted to their character and their needs, for the simple reason that it leads them on to joy.

It may be said at once, subject to exceptions, explanations, and reservations, that this result is generally attained by the French, that they really are, in-doors, a happy nation, and that their marriages, as a whole, present enviable results.

attained. What pleases us at twenty, begins to lose its charm at thirty, and wearies us at forty. And if this be true of men, it is truer still of women, who, as a natural result of the home-life they lead, are fatally condemned to aspire after variety of indoor emotions, because they can find none outside. The husband who has studied the philosophy of home happiness, who has entered marriage with a true sense of its dangers and its powers, will not wait for his wife to manifest fatigue; from the first hour of their common existence he will begin to teach her that the tie between man and woman cannot preserve its vigour and its first eager truth unless the elements which compose it are skilfully replaced and thoughtfully renewed as they successively wear out and gradually cease to produce their old effect: he will try to show to her, while she is still in the enthusiasm of early wedded joy, that happiness, like all other states-and perhaps even more than all the rest-is, by its very nature, but a passing, transitory condition; that what gave it to us yesterday may fail to create it for us to-day; that the sympathies which seem to us so ardent and so durable in the inexperience of our beginnings, will be but fading brightnesses if we do not watch over each fluctuation of their aspects, each faint symptom of their change. Young wives may hesitate when first such theories as these are laid before their astonished eyes: it causes pain to their earnest fondness of the moment to be assured that, according to the laws of probability, that fondness will not last unless new nourishment, new starting points, new stimulants be provided for it as years pass on. But when once they have grown accustomed to the argument-when once they have been led to an appreciation of its unvary

It may be as well, however, before going further, to attempt to give a definition of married happiness as it is sometimes comprehended and pursued in its highest form across the Channel. It is not always quite the same condition. It not unfrequently implies, amongst the educated classes, a ceaseless employment of intelligence and skill, such as we rarely know of here. The mass in France, of course, acts like the mass elsewhere; it takes life as it finds it; it "lets it rip," as the Americans say. It seeks no improvement; it crawls on with what it has. But there is a theory of marriage which some French men and women understand and realisea theory which not only leads them to distinguish the highest uses to which the married state may tend, but which enables them to detect the means by which those uses can be reached. In cases such as these, the life which two lead together becomes a constant, ever-growing pursuit of forms and shades of happiness which are beyond the thought, and even beyond the faculty of comprehension, of the crowd. The basis of their practice rests on the wise precept, that as our longings, our necessities, and our fancies, change with time and age, and with position too, the attempts we make to satisfy those longings and those fancies should vary their nature and their character in sympathy with the modifications which occur in the object to be

ing and universal application-then, the future to take care of itself, and if they do love their husband truly, to allow the early rush of mutual they become his active aid, his con- satisfaction to struggle to its end, vinced co-operator in the delicate without providently preparing, in but inestimable labour of maintain- good time, the elements of the ing, in all its strength of origin, of second act of married life, then he developing to its fullest growth of reaches the usual emptiness and perfectness, the first object of their disappointment in ignorance of the united life-joint happiness. causes which have produced them, and ends by regarding them as a natural consequence of matrimony. But if he is a thinking man, if he has given some of his attention to a calculation of the conditions necessary for the conservation of home delight, then he does indeed suffer if he finds himself tied for all life to a woman who is incapable of helping him to attain, by mutual labour and mutual watchfulness, that rare but admirable result-permanent and increasing joy in marriage.

And yet examples seem to indicate that frequently women do not possess the faculty of understanding the profound utility of this crafty handling of their lives; when once they have really grasped it they are capable of contributing to the result with even more power than men; but their appreciation of the necessity of the effort is often sluggish, and, as a rule, they have to be dragged to it either by entreaty or necessity. The general tendency of wivesin France as elsewhere-is to regard happiness as a vested right, as a In France there are certainly a natural fact, as a permanent condi- good many people who rise to these tion, as a self-sufficing, self-main- higher views-who look on martaining state, which ought to go on riage as a serious occupation, which and last because it has once begun. requires absorbing thought-who Most of them violently revolt the ceaselessly endeavour to improve its first time they are asked to own form, and to lift its consequences that married happiness may be, on and its products above the level of the contrary, and by its very es- humdrum existences. And often sence, the most ephemeral of all they succeed. Now success, in such short-lived creations. They take a case, implies that they distil, from man's love as a property and a due; contact with each other, a degree, they fancy that it is the husband's an elevation, a thoroughness, a perduty to keep up that love without petuity, and a reality of happiness any special aid from themselves; which less able and less careful they let themselves be loved, but manipulators of home-life are incathey do not help love to last; as pable of producing. They show us Johnson said, "they know how to what skill and science can elaborate make nets, but not how to make from ordinary sources; they show cages." In cases such as these-and, us the height of satisfaction to unfortunately, they constitute the which we are capable of climbing, majority of experiences in all lands in the relation between man and wife, —there is small hope of permanent if we will but regard that relation as contentment: if the husband is ig a plant to be sedulously cultivated, norant enough'- as indeed the and not as a weed to be left to comgreater part of husbands are to bat unaided for existence. Many view the case exactly as the wife an example might be given in supdoes to imagine that he can leave port of this rough indication of

what marriage may be when it is rightly understood. In the higher ranks of French society there are men who merit to be called professors of the art of happiness; who have analysed its ingredients with careful fingers and scrutinising eyes; who have consummated their experience of means and ends; who, like able doctors, can apply an immediate remedy to the daily difficulties of home-life; whose practice is worthy of their theory, and who prove it by maintaining in their wives' hearts and in their own a perennial never-weakening sentiment of gratitude and love. But, alas! these cases are exceptions. Most French people content themselves, like their neighbours in other countries, with rumbling carelessly through marriage, making no attempt to improve it, and not even suspecting that it is capable of improvement. And yet, thanks to their light, laughing natures, they generally keep clear of gloom. They bring into married life the bright cheeriness which is so frequently an attribute of their race; they stave off worry by insouciance; they support annoyances with a coolness, which in their case is not indifference, but which, to an unpractised foreign eye, looks so singularly like it, that it is difficult at first to fix the point where calm patience appears to end, and indifference seems to begin.

There are, however, contradictions in abundance to this rule of quietly supporting cares. Frenchmen have sometimes in their character so many of the faults which elsewhere are supposed to be the property of women only, that they are capable of growing fidgety and nervous to a scarcely credible degree; and woe to the unlucky wife who stumbles on a husband of that species!-he wears her out with teazing. Gentle and

affectionate as the men ordinarily are, there are some among them who are absolutely intolerable at home. Luckily they form an infinitely small minority; otherwise it would be nonsense to pretend that French marriages, on the whole, are happy. The evidence which can be collected by listening to opinions, including ill-natured scandal in all its forms, tends certainly to show that, according to their impressions of each other, most Frenchmen are singularly forbearing towards their wives; they do not make the most of them

that effort is limited to the rare examples which were alluded to just now-but their habit is to treat them with much softness, with constant consideration, with deference and courtesy. They generally come together, in the origin, without much passion, or, indeed, much love; the conditions under which their marriages are arranged make that fact easily comprehensible; but love does grow up between them in nearly every case, and they end by feeling for each other an attachment quite as real, as thorough, and as deep, as we find in countries where other systems are in use. It is far from easy to discover really unhappy marriages in France; here and there are isolated instances, evident to every one, for they have terminated in voluntary separation; but the testimony of society, and particularly of the women, who are not more charitable towards each other in France than they are in other lands, in no way indicates any multiplicity of failures. The impossibility of divorce creates a strong motive for mutual concessions, with the object of soothing away asperities, and of rendering obligatory companionship supportable, if not agreeable. As for absolute infidelity, on either side, it is now so rare that it is often possible

to look round a large circle of intimate acquaintance without being able to point out one example of it. This assertion may seem absurd and false to that large group of English people, which, though in total ignorance of the facts, grows up, lives, and dies in the contrary conviction --but the assertion is strictly, literally true. The marriage-tie is vigorously felt in France: husbands and wives cleave there to each other, and do not now seek for illicit joys, whatever some of them may have done in days gone by. Indeed, they point to England at this moment as the country which produces palpably the largest amount of conjugal irregularity, and quote in proof, with bitter justice, the shameless details of the Divorce Court which are given in our newspapers. We have grown accustomed to this odious publicity; habit blinds us to its dangers and its indecency; but if we could hear foreigners talk about it-if we knew the impression of disgust which it creates in France, where the rare cases of co-respondency are treated criminally, and are always pleaded with closed doors; where husbands do not receive money-damages for their wife's dishonour-we should perhaps be led to recognise that, in this question, we do not offer a satisfying spectacle to Europe, and that we have lost all right to throw stones at others. We are unable to judge ourselves on such a subject; we must submit to the verdict of lookers-on ; and a very painful one

it is for us to support.

But if the French are less attackable than we are on this element of the workings-out of marriage, they are open in another direction to a founded imputation, to which allusion has been already made, and which is almost graver still, because its application, instead

of being exceptional, is universal. Their marriages produce scarcely any children. Here discussion is needless; here differences of opinion cannot exist; here prejudices cannot apply,-for the fact is proved by their own official returns. Before the revolution of 1789 the population of France amounted to about 24,000,000, and the annual number of births was about 970,000. At this moment the population is about 37,000,000, and the average number of births is only 950,000 per annum. In other words, though the population is one-half larger than it was a hundred years ago, it begets absolutely fewer children now than then. The present yearly birth-rate in France is the lowest in the world. In Germany it represents 1 in 25 of the entire population, in England it is 1 in 30, in France it is only 1 in 39. And it must be borne in mind that this diminution does not result from any falling off in the proportionate rate of marriage, which, as has been stated, keeps up its place in comparison with other countries. It is solely brought about by the wilful refusal of married people to become fathers and mothers, as married people do elsewhere. A topic of such a nature is awkward to dissect, but it constitutes one of the salient facts of the subject, and it could not be omitted without leaving a great gap in the discussion; it forms one of its striking features, and it necessarily exercises an important influence on the opinion to be formed. The rejection of paternity is a consequence of the excessive prudence with which the entire subject is handled by the French; they do not marry unless they think they can afford it; they do not have children unless they think they can provide for them. It in no way affects the attachment

between man and wife; it in no way diminishes their affection for their children, when they have them. On the contrary, their family tenderness is demonstrative and excessive, as has been repeated many times throughout these sketches of their home-life. But the mere existence of this resolute unwillingness to have children, places France in a low position before Europe, and suggests grave doubts as to the moral value and efficacy of a system which, whatever be its merits and its qualities, whatever be the happiness which it produces, results in so flagrant a negation of the first object and first duty of marriage. It may perhaps be denied that it forms an inherent part of the entire scheme; it may perhaps be argued that it is an accident, a temporary tendency; it may perhaps be urged that the general organisation of married life in France should not be held responsible for it; but to such objections it may be fairly answered, that the tendency in question, instead of assuming a temporary aspect, has gone on steadily gaining strength for a hundred years; that during the present generation its development has coincided with an increase of wealth, which ought, apparently, to have brought about an exactly opposite effect; and that it is, consequently, quite reasonable to regard it as a definitely adopted policy.

Now, whatever be the value, in political economy, of the principle of "circumspection in marriage with which Malthus has associated his name, there are but few of us who can look at it with approbation from a moral or a social point of view; and though he himself, if he were still alive, might be immensely gratified to find that an entire nation is realising his ideas on the largest scale, we, who in this case are but

simple critics of the results of married life in their natural and habitual form, may be allowed to view the matter otherwise. Abstract theories about movements of population, and about proportions between demand and supply, can never be got into the heads of people who regard marriage as we all do, not only as an institution destined to give personal contentment to those who profit by it, but, quite as much, as a link between successive generations. How, then, can we help recoiling, with a good deal of really felt disgust, from the insufficient use of marriage which is so evident in France? And yet, strong as this feeling may be in us, it must not lead us to exaggeration. The rule is proved by the figures which have been quoted; there is no doubt about its application in the majority of cases; but there are exceptions in abundance; the whole nation is not infected; there are still in France a good many people who trust in God, and not in Mr Malthus. That too intelligent Englishman is not, however, the inspirer of French peasants in the matter; scarcely any of them have ever heard his name; they execute what he advised; they work out his teaching, but without knowing what he taught. Their motive is individual, not national; they have no idea that they are practising political philosophy when they tell you, as they do, that "il faut faire la soupe avant de faire l'enfant."

The exceptions are, happily, sufficiently numerous to give some little brightness to a picture which would otherwise be so dark. There are, here and there, large families in France, and nowhere can more admirable illustrations of pure homelife be found than those they offer. It is, perhaps, especially in the upper sections of society that those examples are to be found; the trading and working classes have, ordi

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