anniversary of the King of France's return to Paris," which fête, he magnificently adds, "cost me forty thousand francs." Was it as much, M. de Marcellus, for you had the management of all this magnificence? No, says that matter-of-fact witness. The dinner to his Royal Highness of York cost 8000 francs; the other affair, 12,000. M. de Marcellus can produce the bills, if necessary, and prove his case. We need not trouble him. In such a dispute we would, as Hamlet with the Ghost, take his word for a thousand pounds. The Ambassador's we would not for those forty thousand francs.

Quite alive, too, is the Comte to the Vicomte's indulgence in "words, words, words" (Hamlet again), that must be taken at a very reduced meaning. As where Chateaubriand says he could sometimes wish to be minister or king, in order to laugh at his enemies-but would certainly, before twenty-four hours were gone by, pitch his crown and portfolio out of window. This flight of fancy the commentator statistically reduces to its lowest terms. Here, again, is a similar bit of falsetto. "The Marquis of Londonderry is coming, do you say? Merciful Heavens! where shall I hide myself? Who will deliver me, who will snatch me away from these persecutions ?" The Secretary's comment is: "I recognise myself here. It was I, in fact, who announced to M. de Chateaubriand these prévenances of the English Ministers and aristocracy towards the representative of the King of France; but there was no persecution there; and the ambassador would have complained a great deal more if these attentions had been wanting." Surely the Secretary reads the Ambassador aright. Nothing apparently galled that sensitive spirit like indifference or neglect. But peace be with him : he had his good qualities, and great endowments, and of these M. de Marcellus takes due note, though we have been less generously employed. The reader will see Chateaubriand to signal advantage, as well as some disadvantage, in the work under review.

Except, however, to those who are conversant with Chateaubriand's life and writings, this series of Etudes will be found on the whole deficient of interest. And even the initiated will find it expedient to have a copy of the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe lying open on the table, if they would keep up with the commentator, and appreciate his comments.

J. C. X.

GETTING MARRIED.

BY EDWARD P. ROWSELL.

It is astonishing how in this world teachers abound. Charming little books are constantly issuing from the press upon every conceivable subject whereon men, women, and children require to be taught. Innumerable are the essays on the care of the soul, endless the treatises on the management of the body, and never does any passing event discover some point upon which mankind know little or nothing, than immediately there start forth a number of handbooks, and guides, and explanations, which would really seem to show mankind upon that very point to be peculiarly well informed. Unfortunately, it is the ignorance which is the fact, and the asserted knowledge the falsehood. The best advice, and the best mode of giving advice, for rendering the soul righteous or the body healthy, need much more thought than the majority of easy authors seem to bestow. We have pretty good evidence of this in the world still. Plaintive tales of repentant cottagers and angelic, but phthisical Sunday scholars, dying on fine summer evenings, may, for a moment, move good little hearts to supply a tear to pretty little eyes, but the emotion is past directly-impression there is none. Stronger medicine than this must work the soul's cure. The powder was wholesome physic for the child, but its effect was neutralised by the jam in which it lay hid.

So, it is easy enough to bid people neither eat, drink, nor sleep too much. The agricultural labourer who supports eight people upon ten shillings per week, is not likely to disobey you. Quite right it is to caution against insufficient nourishment; there is a huge class who are not in the least likely to disregard the hint. The fact is, that while medical men continue to make the blunders they do daily, we begin, naturally, to doubt their knowledge altogether. The reader will remember it being stated, not long ago, in the House of Lords, that of three eminent medical men who were past cure, and were very quickly about to journey to their long home, two acknowledged that they had entirely lost faith in their system, and one actually expressed an opinion that it did more harm than good. So that we must be excused for shaking our head to medical advice. It is too doubtful an article to our taste. We look upon it as a publican looks at a dul sovereign handed him by a man in corduroy in payment for a half pint of porter. "It may be all right, but we'd rather not."

Not, after all, that it would make much difference, had we suprem faith. If we, and all the world beside, had the profoundest veneratio: for the healing art, and listened with abject reverence to its professor: should we obey them? No; we should eat and drink too much or to little, as we felt inclined, and in all other points follow our disposition just as before. How is it, reader, that whereas we claim to know th right courses of soul, mind, and body, we will insist upon turning out them? It really is a curious inquiry. In the case of the soul, we kno that preachers give us some explanation; that not the most thoroug

conviction will ensure conversion, and that that great change must be wrought by an influence from Heaven. And in the affairs of our daily life we are conscious that, notwithstanding the most vigorous dictate of our judgment, our will often refuses to obey. We seem as though we could not do that, the necessity for which is so clear, and the propriety of which is so manifest. That beautiful temple of the mind, so perfect and harmonious in its proportions, which the Creator raised in our first parent, is defiled and disorganised now, and only fitful and meagre is the light which fills it. We can but wait patiently for its restoration, and long for the time when bright beams from the Eternal throne shall flood it with light for ever.

So, from one cause or another, the Guides and Handbooks do not make many converts. Sometimes the authors know little more than the confessedly ignorant whom they set themselves to teach. Sometimes the lesson is good, but so awkwardly set forth that none will listen to it. Sometimes the advice is so unpalatable, that scarce any will follow it. The world is a thick-headed, obstinate scholar, and makes such little progress, it seems always to be a reproach to the instructors who would bring it to mend its ways.

These remarks form an appropriate preface to any article from our pen on the subject of getting married. In the first place, as a bachelor, it is a subject upon which we can know little or nothing; in the second place, in regard to the few hints we purpose throwing out, we ourselves shall be exceedingly doubtful as to their soundness; and lastly, even assuming them to be valuable, we may incline to the belief that the likelihood of their being attended to is beyond all description remote. It thus becomes manifest that the way is perfectly paved for our outpouring, and we apply ourselves to the task accordingly.

It is not long ago, by-the-by, since we saw an advertisement from some awfully-gifted personage, who offered for the startlingly miserable consideration of a few postage stamps, to impart to any gentleman the astounding secret how he might completely secure the affections of any lady in the briefest period of time. This, indeed, was a secret with a vengeance. Papas and mammas might well turn pale on reading this tremendous announcement, and if there be anything in it, widows with fortunes had better subscribe to build a sort of widows' castle, to which they may retire, and where, by contrivance, they may receive food and all necessaries without any enforced communication with the opposite

sex.

Very poor and insignificant are the jottings which we proffer, in comparison with this exciting tender of service. In fact, we have yet to settle the question with ourselves, Can we honestly and conscientiously, after contemplating and weighing the whole subject with headachy intensity, recommend marriage under any circumstances? Let us see.

Take the case of a married man, with what is termed a "moderate income," and also with a family of four children; Lucy, the eldest, a girl of eighteen, being very fond of dress and display: Charley, the next, sixteen, having a few companions who might be more respectable and more discreet; Harry, the next, fourteen, who keeps the house, and perhaps the neighbourhood, in continual uproar; and Mary, the pet, ten, Jan.-VOL. CXV. NO. CCCCLVII.

H

who is sickly, cross, plain, and stupid. Poor married man, here are a few of the joys of wedded life. How saving he is in all matters of personal expenditure. New coats, how rare are they, and how remorseful is he after the consumption of an extra bottle of old port cruelly abstracted from the little stock which should be entirely devoted to the recovery of the dear child Mary.

Now against this dreary picture set the bright aspect of a bachelor's life. He can spend all his money on himself. You may laugh at the plainness of the statement, and may mutter something about selfishness. Our position will remain unaffected. We are now asking you to look at the pleasant side of a bachelor's existence. Behold the said bachelor never caring a straw about quarter-day debts, or thinking for a moment of such utterly foreign matters as children's ailments or requirements, or women's dresses, or boys' jackets, or girls' frocks, or doctors' bills, or schoolmasters' accounts, or of any other sources of care which bewilder and half frenzy the married man. The bachelor can wander over the globe upon an income which would scarce keep decently a wife and four children. He can indulge a fondness for the fine arts, he can be noted for his charities, or he can be a rake, if he be so minded. Either in right or in wrong doing he has only himself to consider. His independence is glorious, his freedom is supreme.

How is it, then, we have any married men? Well, the answer is not difficult. How is it that Jones, knowing that Smith ruined himself at rouge-et-noir, and finally blew his brains out, continues playing at rouge-et-noir, falling surely and certainly into the same ruin which overtook Smith? How is it that Robinson, while well aware that Brown is at this moment in a lunatic asylum as the penalty of constant intoxication, nevertheless revels in brandy morning, noon, and night? What influence is exerted over me by my knowledge that though Tomkins married Henrietta Bethell through sheer love, it is now a question whether any moral consideration would prevent Tomkins beating his Henrietta day by day, through sheer hatred? Does this warning in any degree diminish my idiotic tendency to dawdle in places where I may chance to meet Esther Simpkins, or prevent my seeking to dissipate the gloom of my soul by vivid recollection of her sister Agnes's bright eyes? I take it that, assuming all who become married men to be blockheads in that respect, there will still claim yearly the honour of "blockheadship" an enormous number of men who up to that time might be considered wise and prudent. Misery through marriage is everywhere. It stares us broadly in the face in newspapers, and its existence is betrayed by Mr. Jones's clouded brow and Mrs. Smith's weak eyes. Who shall question the assertion that at least one half the number of marriages bring but very diluted happiness? Who will dare to say that Robinson, who always addresses his wife as "my dear," and is thought a devoted husband, has not hundreds of times been amazed at his stupidity, in the first place in marrying at all, and secondly, in making the selection he did. Show me the man who will not blush a deep red at the recollec tion of the preposterous notion he had of the excellence of his wife befor she filled that relationship. Let him call to mind how she danced abou in his thoughts day and night-how he found himself influenced i

almost everything he did by hopes and fears in which she was mixed up. Let him remember how incomparably superior he deemed her to other women. Not that he could at any time have given any intelligible reason why he so thought. It was a delusion; even at the time he had a sort of misty notion that he was crazed, but like as a man getting maudlin drunk with gin-and-water, having a wretched feeling that he ought not to drink another drop even while mixing a fifth tumbler, so the infatuated victim, while conscious that his repeated draughts of love had already rendered him nearly imbecile, nevertheless found a certain deplorable consolation in becoming reckless and effecting a ghastly consummation. Let the married man, we say, call all this to recollection, and, even assuming the state of things now to be tolerably comfortable, even taking the bright view, and supposing Lucy, or Jane, or Mary, to have played her part as a wife in manner beyond reproach, yet the husband cannot forbear a smile at thought of the strange spell by which he was enthralled, and the (now) utterly inexplicable delusion which coiled round and enslaved him.

But now it is only fair to admit that something may be said on the other side. A bachelor, confessedly, is, in some sense, looked down upon. After all, a man who represents himself, his wife, and sundry children, has a certain degree of weight and importance about him which can never attach to a bachelor. When I look upon Jones I always fancy I am looking at six human beings. I not only see the man himself, but I see his wife and four children. If I turn to Green, I behold a solitary creature. He represents no one but himself, and he dwindles in consequence. Then it must be admitted that with all their failings, though they are very far indeed from being angels, yet that the Esthers, the Agneses, the Lucys, the Marys, the Seraphinas, the Carolines, and all the party of sweet-named and ugly-named entrappers of men, can and do, for the most part, help the summer sun to shine more brightly, and can and do lighten and alleviate the winter gloom. White knows full well that during that long day of trouble which visited him there was a sustaining influence which never drooped or failed. When blow followed blow, he knows the heart which never sank, the face that never grew clouded, the voice which never waxed faint. When the slightest vestige of passion had disappeared, and years of married life had produced some degree of indifference so long as the sky was clear, he knows who, when the storm arose and threatened to overthrow the dwelling, became animated with fresh vigour, threw aside the apathy which quietude might have engendered, and displayed, in all its broad and noble proportions, a wife's fidelity. The bachelor is ignorant of all this. He fights the battle of life alone. No heart beats madly at his triumphs, no tear falls when failure is his lot. No eye, fading with his own, turns to God in humble hope that it may close upon this world first. His is the solitary course. In life he is alone; in death alone.

Then the bachelor has his petty worries and annoyances. Assuming him to be in by no means an elevated position in life, yet, being a bachelor, he will probably save money. And as there is no one to whom, almost as a matter of course, he will leave this money at his death, it will come to pass that every one of his relatives and friends will have an