magic, to a sallow hue. Bit by bit, the adventitious graces are laid aside, until at last the fond couple are revealed to one another in their true shape and ugliness. I can imagine them saying to one another, 'Oh! Augustus, I did not expect to see you like that!' and 'Ah, Julia! I admired you so much, and what a fright you are!' And then, as if to crown your absurdity, you make the marriage contract a life affair. You don't know what sort of creature you are marrying, and yet you bind yourselves to one another for life! You have an expression, 'buying a pig in a poke,' and I think your matrimonial affairs must be good illustrations of this curious mercantile transaction. In many cases you must get very little pig and a great deal of poke."
I felt a shudder run through me to hear the divine institution of marriage thus ridiculed by this sneering infidel, and said in as severe a manner as I could assume:—
"Forbear to ridicule an institution you are incapable of understanding, being destitute of all religion. If you had had the privilege I have enjoyed of being born and bred in a country that possesses a national Church, such as ours of England is, you would have been able to appreciate the sanctity of marriage, and to have understood how advantageous, nay, how necessary it is for the good of the community, that couples, however unsuited they may be to each other, and however miserable they may make one another, should be bound together for the whole term of their natural lives, and be unable to untie the knot that binds them together without committing an offence that shall ever afterwards exclude them from all respectable society."
