narily, so little religion and so little elevation of moral convictions that they abound the other way; and, as they constitute the mass, it is they, almost alone, who have brought about the decline in the progress of population. It is, therefore, not unjust to say, in principle, subject of course to reservations on both sides, that the higher ranks are now multiplying in France more rapidly than the lower strata. This progress is of course imperceptible materially, but, in its degree, it certainly exists. Another, but a very different question, which it is worth while to look at, is the influence of society, or, more exactly, of social relations on the results of marriage. Evidence upon it is very plentiful and easy to collect; for we have but to listen to the talk when half-a-dozen people are together. Whatever be the class which we observe, we find on this head a general similarity of action and effects. Notwithstanding their great love of home, Frenchwomen live a good deal with each other and with men: their form of life is so free from the restrictions and the obstacles which we impose upon ourselves-there is generally so much liberty and facility of visiting at all hours of the day and evening -that the contact between acquaintances attains a frequency of which we have no idea. In the higher classes some few husbands go to clubs, or live somewhat in their own rooms; but such cases are exceptions; with them, as in the middle groups, husbands are ordinarily with their wives, accompany them wherever they can, and share their friendships and their distractions. With so eminently sociable a race it is natural that this should be so, and the disposition is confirmed by the original conditions of marriage, which always-as much as possible, at least-provide for the

maintenance of family connections afterwards. The French do not regard marriage as a state in which two people are to be tied up by themselves; they view it as an association, which should in no way affect the habitual contact between the parties to it and the rest of the world outside. Of course, in practice, everybody remains free to select his or her own system of existence. There are examples, and a good many too, of married people who stop at home, "qui vivent en sauvages," as their neighbours say of them; but they constitute the exceptions-the rule is the other way. The facility of making visits, and walking about alone, and going to parties without a chaperon, is proper to all girls who marry, whatever be their country; the French have no monopoly of it. It is not therefore as an act of freedom that newly-married Frenchwomen go into society; they do it because they like it, because their husbands like it, because it is the habit of their nation. The idea that marriage confers any special liberty on Frenchwomen is most erroneous; they have neither more nor less of it than women possess elsewhere; it is, however, comprehensible that the contrast between that degree of liberty and the extreme reserve in which the girls are kept (which we perhaps should do well to imitate) should have provoked amongst us the false impression that a French wife acquires a greater emancipation than other European wives enjoy. She remains bound by the universal laws which regulate the conduct and the attitude of women; she obtains no peculiar rights; she shakes off no chains; she does but gain the position and the power which enable her to discharge the new duties which devolve upon her. Foremost amongst those duties is the

obligation to maintain her social place. She likes the obligation; it costs her no effort to discharge it; and, in most cases, she would annoy and disappoint her husband if she neglected it. So they go about together and amuse themselves, as a right and proper thing to do; it is one of the objects for which they married.

In limits such as these it can scarcely be alleged that the habit of social intercourse, highly developed though it be in France, constitutes a danger for home peace. There are crowds of married people there who never stop at home, whose life is almost exclusively passed with others: but if they all like it, there is no harm in that; it is only when one side is discontented with the practice, while the other wilfully continues it, that it grows into an obstacle. This case exists, of course, but it is rare most French men and women like society too much for either of them to shrink away from it.

This constant contact with other people has, however, the inconvenience of provoking vanities and envies, and consequently of leading women to expense. There lies, perhaps, the only serious objection to it which can be urged as regards its influence on married life. It cannot be seriously said, by any one who knows the French, that it at all affects their regular attention to their home duties, especially towards their children, who are thought of and cared for before all else; but it is not possible to deny that it tempts the women on to dress, and to the other rivalries which drawingrooms provoke. But most French husbands rather like their wives to shine, and look on complacently at the effect which they produce, and at the triumphs which they achieve. The association between them is

VOL. CXIV.-NO. DCXCIII.

generally intimate enough for each of them to find satisfaction in the other's glories, even if they take only the tiny form of a successful gown. So, if they can afford it, the additional outlay which is induced by much going out, does not become a source of difficulty between them. Whether it does them any good, whether it aids them to really love each other better, whether it elevates their views, may certainly be doubted; but as it amuses and contents them-as it gives them a common object in life, such as it is—we may admit that, with their ideas, they are right to hold to it.

Even in the trading classes there is a good deal of this seeking for society, in a small way. There, however, the wife usually assumes a position of a pecular kind. She does not visit so much with her husband at night, but she is his companion throughout the day, wherever the nature of his occupation makes it possible that she should remain with him; she participates in his life, she shares his cares, she helps him in his work. At the top of the scale, the French wife is a woman of the world; at the bottom of it she is a drudge, as is the case in other lands; but in the lower middle strata she takes a special place by her husband's side,-so sympathetic, so cordially real, that to many of us she presents a high realisation of the idea of what a wife should be. It is only in the central ranks of population that we find fair average national examples; above and below those ranks, both wealth and poverty come into play, and introduce conditions of existence which diminish the teaching value of the classes which they influence. But in the bourgeoisie, which constitutes in its various degrees so large an element

C

of the French nation, we find the unadulterated type of France. It is there that we should look for the speaking signs of a general state; and if these signs are cheering, if they indicate success, if they testify that satisfactory ends are reached, we may surely conclude that good causes are at work; and we may, consequently and fairly, arrive at the opinion that, whatever be its faults, the system is not all bad, and that, on the contrary, it renders possible a form of home unity which is peculiar to the race. It is not by mere comparison with the results obtained elsewhere that we can safely judge this question. Each people has its own special needs, its own special means of satisfying them. A great many of us are disposed to positively deny that the thorough oneness of existence, which is so distinctive a characteristic of married life in the French middle and trading classes, is, in reality, a merit. The subject has been many times discussed from the English point of view, and it has been generally alleged that the absorption of women into the hourly details of their husbands' lives involves more disadvantages than advantages. It has been argued frequently that it leaves no time for the discharge of the duties which specially devolve on women; that it diverts their thoughts to subjects which are foreign to their natures; that it leads them to neglect their children. But are these objections founded? Are they not mainly, if not entirely, a product of the widely different habits under which we live? And, even if they are based on fact, do they express a just and serious criticism of conditions of home life, which, from the widely opposite practices in which we grow up, we are unable to appreciate with fairness? Surely it may be urged that every act which fortifies the tie between man and wife is not only respectable in

theory but desirable in practice. Surely a true appreciation of the relative values of the different services which a wife can render, of the different joys which she can provoke, can be more surely reached by the husband himself than by distant lookers - on, who, unconsciously perhaps, bring all their own prejudices into the discussion. If, then, we find, as we distinctly do, that the French themselves proclaim the merit of the adjunction of the wife to her husband's labours; if we see that the association which is entailed by marriage is regarded by them as applicable not only to sentimental ends, but to the practical details of life as well; if women, as a consequence of this view, sit by the side of men in offices and shops, instead of leaving them to work through the day alone,-we ought, in justice, to acknowledge not only that the persons directly interested must be better able to decide than we are, but, furthermore, that such constant presence, such constant sympathy of object and of thought, must tend to strengthen the bond between them, and must augment their friendship. On this point, therefore, we may admit that the French habit is a wise one.

As regards intellectual progress, marriage ordinarily leads the French to nothing. The notion that wife and husband may usefully help each other on such a road seems not to enter their heads, unless, in special cases, where the acquirement of knowledge, or its distribution to others, constitutes the occupation of life.

When once they have left off schooling, the French cease to study; they continue what they call their "education," but they give up "instruction." The two words are here employed in the sense which is peculiar to Francethe former meaning moral and social teaching only, the latter implying

solely book-learning in its various forms. They continue to improve themselves as men and women, as towards their soul (when they think they have one) or towards the world at large; but they abandon the attempt to add to what they learned in youth. These descriptions are of course general, not universal; but their application is so usual that they need not be accompanied by any special reservations. With such views and practices, it is natural enough that marriage should introduce no new ideas of action. A husband may push his wife towards art, though that depends on his or her proclivities; but scarcely ever will he think of leading her to read, or of communicating to her what he may know himself. In quantities of drawingrooms in France an open book is never seen; in some of them even newspapers are exceptional objects. This does not refer to the higher classes, where, frequently, there does exist some desire for new facts; but the want of books on the tables of the bourgeoisie creates a cheerless blank which no profusion of plants or flowers can fill up. Sometimes one observes two or three stately volumes in red morocco, which evidently are never looked at, and probably have never been read; all they do is to confirm the thought that their proprietors look to other people, and not to print, for fresh impressions. But conversation, whatever be its merit, whatever be the clever uses made of it, does not replace reading as a developer of knowledge; all it does is to enable us to use knowledge if we have it. In this direction French married life is far inferior to our own. Our women read; our men generally feel some sort of interest in what their wives are learning; and without pretending that marriage is, with us, an aid to study, it is so certainly when we compare it to what occurs

in France. Music, on the contrary, is more general in French houses than in ours; art is more keenly felt and more naturally utilised. There marriage serves an end, for it is particularly after marriage that Frenchwomen attain the skill which distinguishes them in all the forms of indoor adornment, which means the daily application of the home shapes of art. To this the husbands contribute a good deal; in this they help their wives. But, whatever be the value of such action, whatever be the additional attraction bestowed on home by this common effort to add charm to it, the absence of the higher tendencies of intelligence implies an inferiority of object which is one of the weak points of the entire system. The sentiments find full satisfaction in most French marriages-the affections are contented-family duties are attentively and even eagerly performed-home is decorated, so far as the purse allows, with the wise ambition of rendering it more seductive; but there is little culture of the intelligence, and the pleasures which that culture is capable of producing in marriage are relatively unknown.

Even in the country reading does not assume an important place amongst the occupations of the day: there is more of it than in the towns, but not enough to justify the statement that it constitutes an element of life. As there is less society in the chateau and the village than in the centres of population, wives have to look for something else than gossip to enable them to pass their hours. Home cares absorb a considerable portion of their time-visits to the sick and poor, which few women of the better sort neglect, contribute to employ it; but reading seldom becomes a constant object, even when it rains.

The Revue des Deux Mondes,' or the Correspondant,' according to the

opinions of the house, and translations of a few English novels, constitute the habitual limit of female study. With all their inventiveness, the French have not discovered that reading is not only the most natural, but also the most useful of home occupations; so, as a rule, their marriages do without it.

There is one more point to glance at. What is the influence of religion on married life in France, and how does marriage influence the practice of religion? The solution of such a question depends on personal opinion in every case, but it is not, perhaps, impossible to give a proximately correct reply to it as a whole. All French children begin by faith; many of the girls preserve it, most of the boys abandon it, in varying degrees on both sides. The result is, that when a man and a woman come together in marriage, the woman frequently believes, the man habitually does not. They therefore pretty often start in life with a tolerably'complete divergence on a grave subject, which, if they thought alike upon it, would serve, on the contrary, to create a further tie between them. But there is abundant evidence to show that this divergence exercises but small effect on the sentiments of wife and husband towards each other, and even that the divergence itself is often more apparent than real. If we apply to the better sort of women for information, we are generally informed that their husbands leave them alone, do not interfere with their discharge of their religious duties, and even, in certain cases, accompany them to church as a matter of propriety. In the educated classes it is rare to meet with men who are actively hostile to religion. Many of them say that they regard it as a worn-out means of civilisation, as an unnecessary complication, as a bar to progress; but, what

ever they may say in words, scarcely any of them go beyond passive indifference in acts. No simpler or more conclusive proof of this can be adduced than the fact that one hardly ever sees a father, whatever be the intensity of his views, prevent his son from making his first communion. Full of incredulity as the majority of them are, the upper French feel, in spite of themselves, a sort of vague respect for what they believed as boys. However complete be their loss of faith, they unconsciously retain, in most cases, a sentiment of hesitating deference for religion which makes it difficult for them to take up a strong attitude about it towards their wives. The result is, that the distance between their respective views, however considerable it be, is not unfrequently bridged over by mutual forbearances and concessions; so that, really, no practical dissentiment arises, and no home difficulty results from the want of community of faith. This sort of negative contentment is, however, possible only in cases where no passion is displayed on either side upon the subject; when husbands and wives are eager in the matter, when they set actively to work to convert each other, then they generally end in worry. But if they are patient, and wait for the effect of all the influences which the constant contact of married life places at their disposal, then, not unfrequently, they do end by conversion

that is, the conversion of the husband; for, though there are quantities of men who are led by their wives to faith, there is hardly a woman to be found who has been led by her husband to infidelity.

These considerations apply mainly to the upper classes. The case presents a different aspect if we examine it in the strata where