in spite of the resistance offered to him. India is the scene of the utmost extension of this power of the sheer egotism of the husband. In that country he considers his possession of his wife as so absolute, he carries his exaction of fidelity to such an horrible extreme, as to compel the widow, and even the betrothed, to take her place beside her dead husband or fiancé upon the funeral pyre; while the husband whose wife has just died is not obliged to hurt a hair of his head, but can return from the funeral to enter a new nuptial chamber if he wishes, without offending propriety. The selfishness of the husband has not assumed quite such a destructive phase in Europe. Only a few sentimental, hysterical romancers have risen to the height of exacting a fidelity which would continue to exist after the death of the loved one, and portray moonstruck lovers who condemn themselves to eternal mourning and continence, because they can not marry the beloved being on account of death or other obstacles. These visionaries are at least fair enough to lay the decree of this obligation upon both sexes alike, and their Toggenburgs are as often men as women. Their common sense readers however, do not believe in these romantic beings and consider any one in real life who tries to imitate them, a morbid, degenerate creature who tries to make a poetical virtue out of the necessity of the pathological condition of their body or mind. The morals of Christendom concede the facts, both in practice and theory, that love can cease to exist, that one can love repeatedly and that fidelity need not survive love, for they allow the remarriage of widows and widowers to take place and accept the new relations as perfectly moral and above the criticism of society. If at any time and in any place, the wife had been more powerful than the husband, there is no doubt but that all our conceptions of fidelity
