judge of what shall be contributed to the common confidence; and if there
are any concealments, it is well believed that they are for the mutual
good. If every one were as perfect in the marriage relation as those who
are reading these lines, the question of the wife's letters would never
arise. The man, trusting his wife, would not care to pry into any little
secrets his wife might have, or bother himself about her correspondence;
he would know, indeed, that if he had lost her real affection, a
surveillance of her letters could not restore it.

Perhaps it is a modern notion that marriage is a union of trust and not
of suspicion, of expectation of faithfulness the more there is freedom.
At any rate, the tendency, notwithstanding the French decision, is away
from the common-law suspicion and tyranny towards a higher trust in an
enlarged freedom. And it is certain that the rights cannot all be on one
side and the duties on the other. If the husband legally may compel his
wife to show him her letters, the courts will before long grant the same
privilege to the wife. But, without pressing this point, we hold strongly
to the sacredness of correspondence. The letters one receives are in one
sense not his own. They contain the confessions of another soul, the
confidences of another mind, that would be rudely treated if given any
sort of publicity. And while husband and wife are one to each other, they
are two in the eyes of other people, and it may well happen that a friend
will desire to impart something to a discreet woman which she would not
intrust to the babbling husband of that woman. Every life must have its
own privacy and its own place of retirement. The letter is of all things
the most personal and intimate thing. Its bloom is gone when another eye
sees it before the one for which it was intended. Its aroma all escapes
when it is first opened by another person. One might as well wear
second-hand clothing as get a second-hand letter. Here, then, is a sacred
right that ought to be respected, and can be respected without any injury
to domestic life. The habit in some families for the members of it to
show each other's letters is a most disenchanting one. It is just in the
family, between persons most intimate, that these delicacies of
consideration for the privacy of each ought to be most respected. No one
can estimate probably how much of the refinement, of the delicacy of
feeling, has been lost to the world by the int