There is something almost pathetic in the announcement that the law for the simplification of marriages in France has at last been passed. For French marriage law is an old friend, produ of many difficulties highly entertaining to all bot the unfortunate persons concerned; and although its reformation has long been discussed asa consum-motion devoutly to be wished, there was that in the hide-bound logic of this law which was thoroughly typical of the intensely logical people who lived by it, and, as it separ ed, suitable to their nataral Tt' is significant enough that the new law has passed almost unnoticed by the general public. The old regime of the Code Napoleon pat the entire control of a lover's destinies into the nds of his parents. If his parents refused him permission to marry, he could, if he were over twenty-five, bail his parents before the Law to show just cause or reason why they withheld consent. But the Lay, usual] parent itself, invariably sided against the lover. The Law was just as re-morseles towards his beloved. If he had no parents, the lover had to obtain the consent of the conseil de famille of all his uncles and aunts. If they were living too far apart for a conseil, the the consent in writing of every one of them had to be sought. If the date on one of those papers were more than three months old at the date of the wedding, it invalidated all the others, and all papers were liable] to have to be signed afresh. It was m. thus that the case was recorded, about the beginning of this century, of a man who had been trying in vain to get married for three years! The new law virtually ullifies all the most important restrictions of the old; it reduces parental consent and the conseil de famille to a hollow for-inula; henceforward it need be hardly more difficult to get married in France than in England. This is terribly subversive of the parental authority and centralization of France, two prior ciples obviously allied, which were the ideal of the Code Napoleon. But instinct is stronger than many laws; and all the Palais Bourbon will not prevent French mother from entering " cole and driving out ber grown-up son, of thirty years and more, from company she disapproves of; nor the said grownup son from meekly picking up his gloves and suffering himself to be driven.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.