The Marriage Tie

Whether it is that we are poorer, oí that we are more luxuricras and exacting in onr taste?, aud that the girls of today reqnire more in their marriage than thp ordinary Euglishman can afford, I cannot say, but unless girls have greai beauty or large fortunes we hear nrnch more of the difficulty of their marrying. Amoug the mass of women, however, there is uo revulsión from the marriage tie, and all healthy ininded girls and woruen seem to be just asmuch interested in the qnestion as were their grandmothcrs. The one great fact that has kept English society is the inviolability of the marriage tie. Infidlity in a married woman is surely reason enough to justify her hnsband in getting rid of her, and the woman who clamors for divorce on the same grounds as men is snrely lowering the Standard of female purity in a rnthless way. Is man, with his stronger, coarser, more animal nature, to be judged by the same standard of chastity as a woman, with her higher ideáis of life, her purer nature, and the exemption from temptation which she enjoys? lf we think for a moment of the temptation to which men are exposed from their very early youth, and which they undonbtedly combat very tmsuccessfully, and which attacks tbern at a time when they are most; prone to succnmb - in the period of youth, vigor aud ignorance - and contrast their position with that of voznen, we must surely feel that we are degrading orjr sex ■when we askfor a corresponding code of morality, or even suggest that woruen are to be tried by no higher standard than thnt to which men strive to attain. We are told that no unión can survive the conjugal customs and intimacy oí English married life. Perhaps the new woniun liiuks so because in her ephemeral passion no feeling of constancy, affectiou or gratitude is possible. We be lieve that the overwhelming majority of oíd fashioued English vromen regard that intimacy as oue of the purest and sweetest ever devised - one which, when the passion and desire of youth fade away, blossoms into a friendship, a compsnsionship as constant as it is holy, without which their lives would indeed