e present might forbid the union of the
parties, and allege the just impediment.

This precaution was feeble, but not wholly inadequate--in the Middle
Ages; for we know by good evidence that the priest was often interrupted
and the banns forbidden.

But in modern days the banns are never forbidden; in other words, the
precautionary measure that has come down to us from the thirteenth
century is out of date and useless. It rests, indeed, on an estimate of
publicity that has become childish, and almost asinine. If persons about
to marry were compelled to inscribe their names and descriptions in a
Matrimonial Weekly Gazette, and a copy of this were placed on a desk in
ten thousand churches, perhaps we might stop one lady per annum from
marrying her husband's brother, and one gentleman from wedding his
neighbor's wife. But the crying of banns in a single parish church is a
waste of the people's time and the parson's breath.

And so it proved in Griffith Gaunt's case. The Rev. William Wentworth
published, in the usual recitative, the banns of marriage between Thomas
Leicester, of the parish of Marylebone in London, and Mercy Vint,
spinster, of _this_ parish; and creation, present _ex hypothesi
mediaevale_, but absent in fact, assented, by silence, to the union.

So Thomas Leicester wedded Mercy Vint, and took her home to the
"Packhorse."

* * * * *

It would be well if those who stifle their consciences, and commit
crimes, would set up a sort of medico-moral diary, and record their
symptoms minutely day by day. Such records might help to clear away some
vague conventional notions.

To tell the truth, our hero, and now malefactor, (the combination is of
high antiquity,) enjoyed, for several months, the peace of mind that
belongs of right to innocence; and his days passed in a state of smooth
complacency. Mercy was a good, wise, and tender wife; she naturally
looked up to him after marriage more than she did before; she studied
his happiness, as she had never studied her own; she mastered his
character, admired his good qualities, discerned his weaknesses, but did
not view them as defects; only as little traits to be watched, lest she
should give pain to "her master," as she called him.

Affection, in her, took a more obsequious form than it could ever assume
in Kate Peyton. And yet she had great influence, and softly governed
"her master" for his good. She would come into the room and t