Paul's advice on the text of Sarahwhose daughters ye are"-in our marriage homily. Women were held to be the mere goods and chattels, first of father, then of husband, and bought and sold accordingly. Early Christianity, while raising the woman to the level of being one flesh" with the man, absorbed her in him, as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh," giving her few or no rights of her own. Only of late years has she been recognized as a separate entity, with feelings, duties, rights; man's partner and helpmeet, but in no sense his slave, as, though outwardly treated as a goddess, she really was, throughout all the Middle Ages of Europe. Now, public opinion has changed. The much-lauded " Patient Griseldis" would be scouted in most modern society as a woman whose conduct showed a cowardice absolutely criminal; and in many honest minds even Tennyson's lovely story of "Enid and Geraint" leaves an ugly doubt behind whether the man was not a brute and the woman a simpleton.

Yet still, despite advancing civilization, there is in some people a lurking feeling for the brute and against the simpleton; a clinging to the letter of the law-" Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder" -forgetting that many marriages seem made not by God, but, if I may say it, by the devil. Even the marriage service itself warns us that " as many as are coupled together otherwise than as God's word doth allow, are not joined together by Him, neither is their matrimony lawful."

There are many marriages which, "if the secrets of all hearts were disclosed"-I quote still from the marriage service-are unlawful from the first; and many more that become unlawful afterward, to continue in which is far more sinful than to break them. BeBesides infidelity, the one cause for which law, though, I shame to say, not always social opinion or custom, justifies a woman in quitting her husband, there are other wrongs, equally cruel, and equally fatal in result, which Society allows her to endure to the bitter end. A man may be a confirmed drunkard, a spendthrift, a liar-a scoundrel so complete that no honest gentleman would

admit him within his doors; and yet the wretched woman his wife is expected to do her duty"-to stick to him through thick and thin". -so goes the phrase. She must shut her eyes to all his sins, and make believe to herself and the world at large that none exist; continue to obey him and serve him" according to her marriage vow; be the mistress of his house, and-most terrible fate of all !-the mother of his children. And the world, even the virtuous half of it, will uphold and praise her, affirming that she only does what every loyal wife ought to do-and is quite right to do it.

I say she is wrong-culpably wrong; that her noble endurance, falsely socalled, is mere cowardice, and her con jugal submission a degradation as sinful as that of many a woman who omits the marriage ceremony altogether. A woman, married to a thoroughly bad man, and making believe that he is a good man, must be either a hypocrite, lost to all sense of right and wrong, or a fool. Her patience is an error, her self-sacrifice a crime, for neither ends with herself alone.

And here I draw the line-which law as well as public opinion ought to draw -where endurance is bound to end. A childless wife may, if she chooses, immolate herself, like a Hindoo widow, in the moral suttee which many good people still hold to as a part of the Christian religion; but when she is a mother, the case is totally different. There is one cause for which marriage was ordained"-I still quote from the Prayerbook-which has been overlooked by our legislators-namely, the children.

The divorce laws in all countries make the grounds of separation personal between husband and wife, and the question of duty is held to lie solely with these two. Whereas, for both, and beyond both, is a higher duty still -that which they, and Society, owe to the innocent creatures whom marriage has brought into the world; who did not ask to be born, and yet must support existence, tainted by the sins and darkened by the sufferings of parents who primarily never thought of them at all.

I may startle many by affirming that the first duty of every woman who de

liberately chooses the lot of Mother Eve is-her children. Nature herself upholds this law. In most brute beasts, from the time the double life begins the mother is wholly a mother-and solely; the father having nothing at all to do with his offspring. Higher forms of existence recognize the double parental tie; but still the claim of child upon mother and mother upon child, begun through physical sufferings and joys of which men are equally ignorant, and continued through years of patient care of which they are in general quite incapable, constitutes a bond like nothing else in the world. I do not hesitate to say that it is a closer bond and a stronger duty than that toward any husband; unless it be a husband who fulfils all his duties, and is as truly a father as the mother is, or ought to be-a mother. And when these two duties clash, as duties often do in this world, I believe the mother ought to choose first the duty to her children. A man can take care of himself-can ruin or save himself; for, however she may imagine it, very seldom can any woman save a thoroughly bad husband. Nor, though she married him, is she responsible for him, beyond a certain extent; she is responsible for her children from the hour of birth-nay, for the very fact of their existence.

It would be entering on too wide a field of discussion to open the question whether those who are stricken with any hereditary taint should marry, or be allowed to marry, at all. And this paper is meant to deal with a woman's position and duty after marriage; when time has proved without doubt that the marriage was not "made in Heaven, but-in the other place. Is she justified in destroying not only herself but her helpless children, in that hell upon earth which a bad man can create around him by his unrestrained vices?

That word vices answers the question. No mere fault or misfortune, such as incompatibility of temper, hopeless sickness, or worldly ruin, does in the least abrogate that solemn covenant for better for worse''—but vice does. Confirmed drunkenness, evil courses of any kind, ingrained lack of principle, cruel tyranny, and that violent temper that is akin to madness and equally dangerous

whatever compels a woman to teach her children that to serve God they must not imitate their father, warrants her in quitting him, and taking them from him. Whenever things come to that pass that the vileness of the father will destroy the children, physically and morally, then the mother's course is clear. She must save them, nor suffer their father's sins to blight their whole future existence.

For let me dare to utter the plain truth-they ought never to have existed at all. To make a drunkard, a debauchee, a scoundrel of any sort, the father of her children, is, to a righteous woman, a sin almost equivalent to childmurder. And she slays not only their bodies but their souls; entailing on them an hereditary curse, which may not be rooted out for generations.

Therefore, for any good woman married to a scoundrel there is but one duty separation. Not divorce. This, by permitting re-marriage, which the victim would seldom or never desire, would allow the victimizer to carry into a new home the misery he has inflicted on the former one. But legal separation-a mensa et thoro-giving to the wife exactly the position of a widow, and to the children the safety of being fatherless, for a bad father is worse than none -ought to be easily and cheaply attainable by all classes.

The question of income and maintenance would have its difficulties; but, as a general rule, a wife who thus voluntarily leaves her husband should only take away with her what is absolutely her own.

She wishes to be freed from himself; she does not want his money. Also, though this may sometimes fall hard, I think the support of the children should devolve upon her. This removes the possibility of mercenary or worldly or vicious motives for the separation, and places it entirely on moral grounds. Money, wrung legally out of a bad father, would, in most women's eyes, only bring a curse with it; and there are few mothers who, if put to the test, would not prefer the hardest poverty for themselves and their children, rather than the misery of a home in which the name of husband and father is a mere sham; where-sharpest pang of all-they have to sit still and see their

little ones slowly contaminated by one to whom the hapless, innocents owe nothing but the mere accident of exist

ence.

By the outside world, this condition of quasi-widowhood, if sad and difficult, should be held in no way dishonorable. To it would attach none of the degradations and foul revelations of divorce; indeed, the fact that separation was easy would make divorce all the more difficult, as should be. Easy divorce loosens all the rivets which hold society together, and, while giving no consolation to innocence, offers a premium to guilt. The great safeguard of marriage is its inevitableness; the consciousness that no power on earth can ever place either party in the same position as before their union. Otherwise, only too many couples would separate in the first year of their union. But the mistake, known to be irrevocable, is borne, and sometimes partially remedied. When irremediable, the utmost that both parties can expect and most would desire, is to get free from one another-as free as they can, and save their children from the consequences of their fatal error.

This, and no more than this, I think they have a right to. Neither law nor public opinion can place, or ought to place, unhappy married couples in the same position as if they had never committed that false step. One can deeply pity a woman whose husband is transported for forgery, or a man whose wife is shut up permanently in a lunatic asylum; but, though these things involve and justify a life-long separation, they would form a ghastly and dangerous argument for divorce. Nay, speaking as a woman, and for women, I doubt if divorce should ever be permissible. Few of us would either care to become the wife of a divorced man, or feel it right to marry at all while the husband, the father of our children, was still alive.

But the spectacle of a woman who refuses to condone vice and perpetuate evil, who has strength to cut off a right hand and put out a right eye, rather than sin against God and ruin the young souls He has intrusted to her, would be deterrent rather than dangerous. Many a man, who, knowing his wife dare not or cannot leave him, is selfish, tyranni

If

cal, brutal, breaking every law of God. and man except those for which he would be openly punished, if he thought she would leave him, could get rid of him by means short of divorce, and without the odium to herself and the freedom to him that result from divorce would possibly amend his ways. not, he would richly deserve the justice without mercy-for mercy to the sinful is often mercilessness to the innocentwhich is Society's only safeguard against such men. They are not fit for domestic life; and, though in public life some of them brazen it out to the last, the best that Society can do for them is to save other women from them, help their wives to gather together the fragments of a wrecked existence, and teach their children to cover over with wise and duteous silence the very name of father. There are fathers and fathers. Those who deserve the name will not resent my distinguishing between them. And no good husband is harmed by laws which protect hapless women against bad husbands. On the other hand, there are women as unfit to be mothers as wives, and God help the man who has chosen such an one! But, as I have said, the choice is his own; he is apparently, at least the active. not the passive agent in his own hard fate. And he generally bears it in. heroic silence. So should she. If, refusing to lower her womanhood by continuing to live with a bad man, she has courage to quit him, she deserves not merely pity but respect. But she deserves neither, if, while tamely submitting to her misery, she raises a feeble wailing or a monstrous howling against it.

Such women encourage bad men, and injure good men by appealing to the noblest quality of the stronger sexcompassion.

It is to obviate this, to set up a standard by which good men can fairly judge good women, that I write the present paper; starting with the principle that in most cases of unhappy marriage the first thing to be considered is the good of the children. Secondly, that while divorce, being undesirable in itself, and dangerous to the community at large, should be made as difficult as possible, separation, restoring to both parties all rights which they had before marriage,

except that of re-marrying, should be made easily and honorably obtaina

ble.

What men should do in a similar case, I leave to themselves to say. I speak only for women, hoping my words may strengthen some of them to break through that cruel bondage of body and

soul, ending in untold misery-nay, worse than misery, guilt-caused by the false interpretation that so many well-meaning, narrow-minded people put upon the words, most sacred words to all who really understand them !"for better for worse."-Contemporary Review.

THE extraordinary range of temperature to which micro-organisms can be subjected without destroying their vitality is almost beyond belief. We have even one well-known scientist writing, after detailing a series of experiments: "Hence, among all known organic forms, the infusoria and their allies alone would appear to possess the power of weathering the cataclysmic changes of the universe, and, secure from all influences of heat and cold, of migrating in safety through interplanetary space. Still, discounting all speculation, so wonderful are the powers of endurance of these minute beings, so liable to be scouted offhand as incredible, that they gave vitality to one of the bitterest controversies of science-the theory of spontaneous generation-that is, whether life may arise from inorganic matter de novo without the interposition of a parent. The introduction of the microscope with its revelations soon killed the theory in its older and cruder form, but gave rise to one much subtler, which has survived down to the present day. It has shown the world of these small creatures to be a veritable wonderland indeed; it has shown them to appear so strangely and unexpectedly under certain conditions, that the believer in spontaneous generation will not credit their having proceeded from a parent, but prefers to trust to chance to solve his self-imposed difficulty. An examination of this theory will bring under our notice the resistent powers of these micro-organisms.

But before proceeding with it, we may mention shortly what is meant by micro-organisms or animalcules.

If

a

putrescent fluid be examined under the microscope, it will be found to be one swarming mass of living units, jumbling

and jostling each other — in truth, a struggle for life, whole species disappearing in a few days under a more powerful one. Minute oblong bodies are seen pushing or vacillating acrossthese are called bacteria; slender, rod''-like bodies-bacilli-force their way like a fish through reeds; others move in a wavy, shimmering manner, or whirl across with spiral movements. But infusoria, larger and variously shaped, are there, with characteristic and much less mechanical motions. Some advance with apparent labor, others cross the field of vision like the shadow of a bee in its flight. Very curiously are we reminded, too, of familiar objects by their forms and actions. Some are like animated slippers, bottles, whirling saucers, or creeping insects; even the swan has its copy, as graceful in its motions, and to the full more elegant in the ever-varying curves of its long and elastic neck. One form is the miniature of those large-breasted pigeons, and propels itself, now slowly, now with a rush like a starling in search of worms on a meadow of a dewy morning; and feeding it is too, and to good purpose, making short work of those rod-like bodies already mentioned. Their progression is effected by the lashing about of long whip-like filaments, or the quivering of short hairs, with which the body in some cases is covered. There are hundreds of different species of these, easily recognized, from the four-thousandth part, or less, to the twentieth of an inch. Some two centuries ago, these formed an entirely unknown world; and it is only within the last few years that a knowledge of the complete life-histories of some of these has been gained, and in great part in combating the views put forward in

Returning to the theory, then, we find that more than one hundred years ago an Englishman asserted "that animalcules were directly and spontaneously engendered from more highly organized bodies in a state of putrefaction.' Ever since, this idea has been taken up again and again, and buttressed by new arguments, which were brought forward only to be at once refuted. We shall only notice those of Dr. Bastian, the latest advocate of spontaneous generation. He reasoned since no one denies that boiling water kills all forms of life, it follows that if living forms appear in fluids which have been boiled in flasks, afterward hermetically sealed, they must have arisen from inorganic matter experiments show that they do so appear, therefore there is such a thing as spontaneous generation. Others repeated his experiments, and found them to be substantially correct, and were either forced to the above belief, or bound to show his other premise wrong, which everybody hitherto had been willing to admit that is, to show that boiling does not destroy all forms of life. Soon Tyndall and others were to the front with proofs, afforded by most ingenious experiments, that there are organisms which are capable of surviving a temperature of two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit. But again he says, what can be made of the fact, that in a few hours myriads of animalcules appear in a few drops of a putrescent fluid? They cannot have arisen in the ordinary course of nature, but must have been developed spontaneously from the particles of the decaying matter. This seems very plausible; and if we think only of the laws obtaining among the higher animals, almost staggers us; but if we take a look at their life-history, as described by Saville Kent, we need no longer wonder at their sudden appearance, their universal diffusion, or their survival of almost impossible conditions.

If a piece of hay be steeped in water, and examined with a microscope after a few hours, countless swarms of animalcules are seen. Where did they come from? was the question asked. Mr. Kent, by employing the very finest ob

ject-glasses in his microscope, was able to answer. He detected on the hay, when newly moistened, coatings of extremely minute capsules or spores, onetwenty-thousandth inch, which were seen to increase in size, and ultimately develop into animalcules. Dallinger had already observed the reverse of this, and showed the history of these spores, that they were the product, not of the decomposition of the hay, but of living progenitors. With a rare patience, he watched a particular adult animalcule in all its wanderings until it grew quiescent, encysting or incasing itself, and eventually breaking up its whole bodysubstance into almost invisible particles or spores. These spores were shed into the surrounding fluid, and observed to grow into the like form with the parent.

Mr. Kent showed also that the liquid squeezed from dew-laden grass, when viewed under the microscope, is swarming with minute beings in the most vigorous condition. Whence came they? Yesterday they were not, for the grass was dry, and it is only in moisture that the adult can show activity; to-day, they are gone. Whenever the heat of the sun dries the grass, a very few may become encysted, and, their animation suspended, await the return of the rain or dew to resume their activity. But it is to the spores-which, owing to the fertility and quick maturity of animalcules, are always being formed where adults are-we must look for the perpetuation of the species through these dry periods. These, like seeds, resist the drought, and cling to the grass, showing us how it is possible for hay infusions to develop such enormous numbers of these organisms. Hay, however, is not the only resting-place of spores-in fact, the air is full of them, shaken or blown about by the winds from dried-up ditches and withered grass, ready to settle in any favorable liquid and spring into full vigor. herein lies the explanation of how a fluid set aside with no animalcules in it may soon show signs of them--the spores settle into it from the atmosphere, and

And

grow. But the believers in spontaneous generation say that is ridiculous and all mere imagination, and that no one has seen these spores or germs in the air. Here, again, however, they are