sonne autrement que dans tout nature.
Est-ce une douceur qui charme l'oreille?' Celia for a long time plays
with him, but in the end they arrive at a mutual declaration of
affection. 'I have always tenderly loved Jaques,' says Georges Sand in
her preface, and 'I have taken the great liberty of bringing him back to
love. Here is my own romance inserted in that of Shakespeare, and,
although romantic, it is not more improbable than the sudden conversion
of Oliver.' That may be; and yet one might have thought that Georges
Sand, of all people, would not have set herself the interesting but
somewhat futile task of improving upon 'As You Like It.'

MOCKING AT MATRIMONY.

The world has reason to be grateful to the writer who lately
demonstrated the possibility of being happy 'though married.' Some
exposition of the sort was sadly needed. Hitherto the estate of
matrimony has met with a long succession of jibes and sneers. It has had
its apologists, even its prophets and eulogists; but it has had many
more detractors. There is, indeed, no subject on which the satirists of
the world, both great and small, have so largely and so persistently
made merry. It has been a stock subject with them. It is as if they had
said to themselves, 'When at a loss, revile the connubial condition.'
Married life has been the sport of every wit, and, sorrowful to relate,
society has been well content to join in the pastime. There is nothing
so common as sarcasm on matrimony, and nothing, apparently, so welcome,
even to the married.

The banter in question has been of all sorts--sometimes vague, sometimes
particular, in its import. A few censors have confined themselves to
simple condemnation. 'A fellow that's married's a _felo-de-se_,' wrote
the late Shirley Brooks; and he had been anticipated in the stricture.
An anonymous satirist had written:

'"Wedlock's the end of life," one cried;
"Too true, alas!" said Jack, and sigh'd--
"'Twill be the end of mine."'

And if matrimony was not suicide, it was ruin. Old Sir Thomas More had
said of a student who had married that 'in knitting of himself so fast,
himself he had undone.' And a later rhymer, contrasting wedding with
hanging, had come to the conclusion that

'Hanging is better of the twain--
Sooner done and shorter pain.'

To the suggestion that a youth should not marry till he has more wisdom,
the Italian epigrammatist replies that if he waits till he has sense he
will