to a conclusion, make a few general remarks bearing upon the wide question of penal discipline. Firstly, we must ask ourselves this very crucial question, Are our prisons well managed, and do they act as distinct deterrents to crime? To the first query we unhesitatingly reply, Yes. There are faults to be found in all existing institutions, by those who are on the watch for the weak points, but, taking everything into consideration, the present system of prison management is well worked, bearing in mind the extreme difficulties which have to be faced, and the class of men under penal treatment. Are the existing methods, by which criminals are punished, sufficiently deterrent to awe the evil-doer? We also reply, Yes. It is true that prison life to the habitual offender is by no means so disagreeable as some might think, such men being very pachydermatous; but, taking the whole immense machine, by which the law is enforced, into careful consideration, and observing the actual results of this colossal force, we cannot but think that our prisons are deterrent to crime and its votaries. We do not ever wish to see the prisons of England converted into comfortable hotels, as may be seen in America, as at Elmira ; nor, on the other hand, would we welcome an increase in the present stern routine of prison life, which is now as repressive and as merciless as any human institution can well be. Nor are the better class of prisoners now indiscriminately mixed together since the Star Class was introduced.

GEORGE RAYLEIGH VICARS.

IN

A MAN'S THOUGHTS ON

MARRIAGE.

N England again in the idle season-the House is down, and though the cholera scare is a godsend, it hardly suffices to fill all the columns of the daily papers.

There were no papers in the solitude of those lofty mountain heights we have lately left, no news, no worry of life, nothing but a great peace and a wide vast view over the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; but here in the crowded Strand, under our low English skies the news-boys are clamorous.

"A Daily News, sir; a Standard; a Globe; cholera in England; brutal murder in Liverpool; men and why they don't marry."

The boy grins as we shake our head; he would willingly solve the problem, and, if we ask him, will tell us that he does not intend to enrage the community in the same manner; has he not already set himself up with a cane and a blue necktie, and begun "to walk," at sixteen, with a girl who has just left the elementary school?

We escape from his lynx eyes to the quiet of our pipe and fireside, and there, like other old bachelors, try to think the question out.

The newspaper letters about higher education, and cookery, and all such bosh mean very little. What man who wanted to marry a woman would be restrained by the fact that the object of his affection could not make a pie or knew more of political economy than he did? A man in love is not so easily daunted, but a man who is not in love and does not intend to marry will be prolific in his

reasons.

Why do men shudder and turn back instead of taking that "fatal plunge?" Is it that on looking round at the married life of their friends they see little to attract and much to dismay? are they afraid of the time which Shelley thought well to weep over when he uttered that wail over the departure of tenderness and truth ?—

When passion's trance is over-past.

Shelley wept because the flaring gaslight of passion had given

place to the calm light of day. Natures such as Shelley's have cause to weep. They weep for

The light, light love that will not stay,

for the mad passion which, running its course like delirium in fever, leaves the patient weak, sometimes, indeed, only just alive, but sane

once more.

But though the poet Shelley was one of our sweetest singers, we should hardly turn to him for help in this question.

Marriage is supposed to put the last extinguisher on passion's flame, but if love did not survive it, what can we make of the lines that Wordsworth, Robert Browning, and Tennyson have written to their wives?

Read Wordsworth, in the conclusion of the "Prelude."

She came no more a phantom to adorn
A moment, but an inmate of the heart,
And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined
To penetrate the lofty and the low;
Even as one essence of pervading light

Shines in the brightest of ten thousand stars,

And the meek worm that feeds her lowly lamp
Couched in the dewy grass.

See also the beautiful poem, "And dearer far than light and life are dear," with the last stanza,

Peace settles where the intellect is meek,

And love is dutiful in thought and deed;

Through thee communion with that love I seck,

The faith Heaven strengthens where he moulds the creed.

Robert Browning gives us the same idea. He watches his wife reading by firelight when,

If I think but deep enough,

You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme,

and asks her to

Think when our one soul understands

The great word which makes all things new,
When earth breaks up and Heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you
In the house not made with hands?

Oh! I must feel your brain prompt mine,

Your heart anticipate my heart,

You must be just before in fine,

See and make me see, for your part,

New depths of the Divine.

The most perfect lyric ever written by a poet to his wife is that by Procter, beginning

How many summers, love,

Have I been thine?

while the late Poet-Laureate could look back to a long married life and sing

Rose, on this Terrace fifty years ago,

When I was in my June, you in your May,

Two words," My rose," set all your face aglow,
And now that I am white and you are gray,
That blush of fifty years ago, my dear,
Blooms in the past; but close to me to-day
As this red rose, which on our terrace here
Grows in the blue of fifty miles away.

Are not these poems, each by the pen of a great and brilliant man, satiated with the warm, strong, tested love of the husband, by the side of which the early passion of the lover may be compared to the faint dawn of an April morning and the bright sunshine of a July noon?

These poets certainly believe most thoroughly in the love that lives. For confirmation of this let us turn to their works and compare the pure, protecting love of King Arthur with the selfish passion of Sir Lancelot. We find the king, when all is lost, bending over the prostrate figure of his wife, the woman who has betrayed his honour, tarnished his pure name, pulled down the glory of his throne, and we hear his whisper, "My vast pity almost makes me die." We see Enoch Arden, content to efface himself for the sake of his wife's good name, while Geraint, who loved his wife "as he loved the light of heaven," would, rather than a breath should harm her, have forfeited his princedom and its cares, his glory and his name.

There are countless examples, a whole host of them rise at our call, men who have sacrificed everything for the sake of the women whom they have taught to trust them. They expect something from these women in return, it is true, and well it is for them when asking bread they are not given a stone.

Men are what women make them, as all the world knows, and, in spite of other advanced views on the subject, I hold that there is no work on earth so noble or so elevating to a woman as that of doing her part in the work of turning a commonplace man into a hero.

Look at the Holy Grail. The only Knight who saw the vision. clearly was Sir Galahad, upon whom Saint Agnes had bound her colours and sent

The deathless passion in her eyes

Thro' him, and made him hers, and laid her mind

On him, till he believed in her belief.

Look again at Sir Lancelot ; had Elaine been a stronger character, might she not have saved him from himself? and so made this and that other world another world for that morally sick man.

Men sacrifice a great deal when they marry. In giving up their cosy bachelor establishments for the exigencies of modern housekeeping, comfort is apt to fly, and discomfort more than apt to take its place. A married man is no longer one of the idols of society, pretty girls cease to save him dances, and eyes no longer brighten at his approach; he begins a life of taking dowagers into supper, and he finds them much more difficult to talk to than in the days when he was an eligible bachelor.

When a woman becomes engaged, she feels that she has fulfilled her destiny and satisfied her public. She at once becomes the favourite of her relations, who regard her through the rose-coloured glasses of her fiancé. Men cease to be afraid of her and become very friendly, her old-maid friends adulate her, and unengaged girls treat her with veneration. The members of her immediate family, perhaps, pray that the days of her engagement may be shortened, but this is in secret, in the privacy of their chamber. They, probably as much for their own sakes as for hers, leave the lovers a great deal alone, and it is in these long tête-à-tête that the work of degeneration begins.

Soon, sooner perhaps than we like to hear, the old, old story becomes somewhat monotonous; exactly how much better these two love than the rest of the world ceases to have the vivid interest with which it used to inspire them. The time has not yet arrived for those tussles for the mastery which invariably take place over Maple or Liberty's furnishing catalogues, duels in which the man is always defeated because he does not understand some little technical phrase, or shows gross ignorance over the price of blankets. So far this has not begun, and they are thrown on their own resources for entertainment, and now often for the first time does the young fellow see life from a woman's point of view. Well for him, indeed, if her standard is high, for if hers be a pure and good soul, she will have more influence over him than a score of priests. He will learn to know the workings of her mind, and as she reveals herself to him, he will wonder, with awe in his boyish heart, that women should be so good.

When we think what women can do for men, and see how con-