to be allowed to go to sleep, and we may as well face it valiantly, and endeavor to see light through its complications, rather than attempt to lecture the female sex generally on the merits of a "golden silence," and the propriety of adorning themselves with that decoration, (doubtless modestly declined, as too precious for their own use, by masculine reviewers,) "the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit." In a former article (Celibacy v. Marriage-Fraser's Magazine for April, 1862) we treated the subject in part. We now propose to pursue it further and investigate in particular the new phases which it has lately assumed.

The questions involved may be stated very simply.

It appears that there is a natural excess of four or five per cent of females over the males in our population. This, then, might be assumed to be the limits within which female celibacy was normal and inevitable.

There is, however, an actual ratio of thirty per cent of women now in England who never marry, leaving one fourth of both sexes in a state of celibacy. This proportion further appears to be constantly on the increase. It is obvious enough that these facts call for a revision of many of our social arrangements. The old assumption that marriage was the sole destiny of woman, and that it was the business of her husband to afford her support, is brought up short by the statement that one woman in four is certain not to marry, and that three millions of women earn their own living at this moment in England. We may view the case two ways: either

1st. We must frankly accept this new state of things, and educate women and modify trade in accordance therewith, so as to make the condition of celibacy as little injurious as possible; or

2d. We must set ourselves vigorously to stop the current which is leading men and women away from the natural order of Providence. We must do nothing whatever to render celibacy easy or attractive; and we must make the utmost efforts to promote marriage by emigration of women to the colonies, and all other means in our power.

The second of these views we shall in the first place consider. It may be found to color the ideas of a vast number of writers, and to influence essentially the

VOL. LVIII.-NO. 2

decisions made on many points-as the admission of women to university degrees, to the medical profession, and generally to free competition in employment. Lately it has met a powerful and not unkindly exposition in an article in a cotemporary quarterly, entitled, Why are Women Redundant? Therein it is plainly set forth that all efforts to make celibacy easy for women are labors in a wrong direction, and are to be likened to the noxious exertions of quacks to mitigate the symptoms of disease, and allow the patient to persist in his evil courses. The root of the malady should be struck at, and marriage, the only true vocation for women, promoted at any cost, eyen by the most enormous schemes for the deportation of four hundred and forty thousand females. Thus alone (and by the enforcing of a stricter morality on men) should the evil be touched. As to making the labors of single women remunerative, and their lives free and happy, all such mistaken philanthropy will but tend to place them in a position more and more false and unnatural. Marriage will then become to them a matter of "cold philosophic choice," and accordingly may be expected to be more and more frequently declined.

There is a great deal in this view of the case which, on the first blush, approves itself to our minds, and we have not been surprised to find the article in question quoted as of the soundest common-sense. All, save ascetics and visionaries, must admit that, for the mass of mankind, marriage is the right condition, the happiest, and the most conducive to virtue. This position fairly and fully conceded, it might appear that the whole of the consequences deduced followed of necessity, and that the direct promotion of marriage and discountenancing of celibacy was all we had to do in the matter.

A little deeper reflection, however, discloses a very important point which has been dropped out of the argument. Marriage is, indeed, the happiest and best condition for mankind. But does any one think that all marriages are so? When we make the assertion that marriage is good and virtuous, do we mean a marriage of interest, a marriage for wealth, for position, for rank, for support? Surely nothing of the kind. Such marriages as these are the sources of misery and sin, not of happiness and virtue; nay, their moral character, to be fitly designated,

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would require stronger words than we care to use. There is only one kind of marriage which makes good the assertion that it is the right and happy condition for mankind, and that is a marriage founded on free choice, esteem, and affection-in one word, on love. If, then, we seek to promote the happiness and virtue of the community, our efforts must be directed to encouraging only marriages which are of the sort to produce them-namely, marriages founded on love. All marriages founded on interest, on the desire for position, support, or the like, we must discourage to the utmost of our power, as the sources of nothing but wretchedness. Where, now, have we reached? Is it not to the conclusion that to make it a woman's interest to marry, to force her, by barring out every means of self-support and all fairly remunerative labor, to look to marriage as her sole chance of competency, is precisely to drive her into one of those sinful and unhappy marriages? It is quite clear we can never drive her into love. That is a sentiment which poverty, friend lessness, and helplessness can by no means call out. Nor, on the contrary, can competence and freedom in any way check it. It will arise under its natural conditions, if we will but leave the matter alone. A loving marriage can never become a matter of "cold philosophic choice." And if not a loving one, then, for Heaven's sake, let us give no motive for choice at all.

Let the employments of women be raised and multiplied as much as possible, let their labor be as fairly remunerated, let their education be pushed as high, let their whole position be made as healthy and happy as possible, and there will come out once more, here as in every other department of life, the triumph of the divine laws of our nature. Loving marriages are (we can not doubt) what God has designed, not marriages of interest. When we have made it less women's interest to marry, we shall indeed have less and fewer interested marriages, with all their train of miseries and evils. But we shall also have more loving ones, more marriages founded on free choice and free affection. Thus we arrive at the conclusion that for the very end of promoting marriage-that is, such marriage as it is alone desirable to promote-we should pursue a precisely opposite course to that suggested by the Reviewer or his party. Instead of leaving single women as helpless as possible, and

their labor as ill-rewarded — instead of dinning into their cars from childhood that marriage is their one vocation and concern in life, and securing afterward if they miss it that they shall find no other vocation or concern-instead of all this, we shall act exactly on the reverse principle. We shall make single life so free and happy that they shall have not one temptation to change it, save the only temptation which ought to determine them-namely, love. Instead of making marriage a case of "Hobson's choice" for a woman, we shall endeavor to give her such independence of all interested considerations that she may make it a choice, not indeed “cold and philosophic," but warm from the heart, and guided by heart and conscience only.

And again, in another way the same principle holds good, and marriage will be found to be best promoted by aiding and not by thwarting the efforts of single women to improve their condition. It is a topic on which we can not speak much, but thus far may suffice. The reviewer alludes with painful truth to a class of the community whose lot is far more grevious than either celibacy or marriage. Justly he traces the unwillingness of hundreds of men to marry to the existence of these unhappy women in their present condition. He would remedy the evil by preaching marriage to such men. But does not all the world know that thousands of these poor souls, of all degrees, would never have fallen into their miserable vocation had any other course been open to them, and they had been enabled to acquire a competence by honest labor? Let such honest courses be opened to them, and then we shall see, as in America, the recruiting of that wretched army becoming less and less possible every year in the country. The self-supporting, and therefore selfrespecting woman may indeed become a wife, and a good and happy one, but she will no longer afford any man a reason for declining to marry.

It is curious to note that while, on the one hand, we are urged to make marriage the sole vocation of women, we are simultaneously met on the other by the outpourings of ridicule and contempt on all who for themselves, or even for their children, seek ever so indirectly to attain this vocation. Only last year all England was entertained by jests concerning "Belgravian mothers;" and the wiles and de

vices of widows and damsels afford an unending topic of satire and amusement in private and public. Now we ask, in all seriousness, Wherefore all this ridicule and contempt? If marriage be indeed the one object of a woman's life - if to give her any other pursuit or interest be only to divert her from that one object and "palliate the symptoms while fostering a great social disease"-then, we repeat, why despise these match-making mothers? Are they to do nothing to help their daughters to their only true vocation, which, if they should miss, their lives ought to be failures, poverty-stricken and miserable? Nay; but if things be so, the most open, uublushing marketing of their daughters is the duty of parents, and the father or mother who leaves the matter to chance is flagrantly neglectful. Truly it is a paradox passing all limits of reason, that society should enforce marriage on woman as her only honorable life, and at the same time should stigmatize as dishonorable the efforts of her parents to settle her in marriage.

The spontaneous sentiment of mankind has hit a deeper truth than the theories of economists. It is in the nature of things disgraceful and abominable that marriage should be made the aim of a woman's life. It can only become what it is meant to be, the completion and crown of the life of either man or woman, when it has arisen from sentiments which can never be bespoken for the convenient fulfillment of any vocation whatsover.

But it is urged, and not unreasonably-If it be admitted on all hands that marriage is the best condition, and that only one fourth of the female sex do not marry, how can we expect provision to be made for this contingency of one chance in four by a girl's parents and by herself in going through an education (perhaps costly and laborious) for a trade or profession which there are three chances in four she will not long continue to exercise?

It must be admitted here is the great knot and difficulty of the higher branches of woman's employment. It does require far-seeing care on the part of the parent, perseverance and resolution of no mean order on that of the daughter, to go through in youth the training which will fit her to earn her livelihood hereafter in any of the more elevated occupations. Nay, it demands that she devote to such

training the precise years of life wherein the chances of marriage are commonly of fered, and the difficulties of pursuing a steady course are very much enhanced by temptations of all kinds. If she wait till the years when such chances fail, and take up a pursuit at thirty merely as a pis aller, she must inevitably remain forever behindhand and in an inferior position.

The trial is undoubtedly considerable, but there are symptoms that both young women and their parents will not be always unwilling to meet it, and to invest both time and money in lines of education which may indeed prove superfluous, but which likewise may afford the mainstay of a life which, without them, would be helpless, aimless, and miserable. The magnitude of the risk ought surely to weigh somewhat in the balance. At the lowest point of view, a woman is no worse off if she marry eventually, for having first gone through an education for some good pursuit; while if she remain single, she is wretchedly off for not having had such education. But this is in fact only a halfview of the case. As we have insisted before, it is only on the standing-ground of a happy and independent celibacy that a woman can really make a free choice in marriage. To secure this standing-ground, a pursuit is more needful than a pecuniary competence, for a life without aim or object is one which, more than all others, goads a woman into accepting any chance of a change. Mariana (we are privately convinced) would have eloped out of the Moated Grange not only with that particular "he" who never came, but with any other suitor who might have presented himself. Only a woman who has something else than making lovo to do and to think of will love really and deeply. It is in real lives-lives devoted to actual service of father or mother, or to work of some kind for God or man-that alone spring up real feelings. Lives of idleness and pleasure have no depth to nourish such plants.

Again, we are very far indeed from maintaining that during marriage it is at all to be desired that a woman should struggle to keep up whatever pursuit she had adopted beforehand. In nine cases out of ten this will drop naturally to the ground, especially when she has children. The great and paramount duties of a mother and wife once adopted, every

other interest sinks, by the beneficent laws of our nature, into a subordinate place in normally constituted minds, and the effort to perpetuate them is as false as it is usually fruitless. Where necessity and poverty compel mothers in the lower ranks to go out to work, we all know too well the evils which ensue. And in the higher classes doubtless the holding tenaciously by any pursuit interfering with home duties must produce such Mrs. Jellabys as we sometimes hear of. It is not only leisure which is in question. There appear to be some occult laws in woman's nature providing against such mistakes by rendering it impossible to pursue the higher branches of art or literature or any work tasking mental exertion, while home and motherly cares have their claims. We have heard of a great artist saying that she is always obliged to leave her children for a few weeks before she can throw herself again into the artist-feeling of her youth, and we believe her experience is corroborated on all hands. No great books have been written or works achieved by women while their children were around them in infancy. No woman can lead the two lives at the same time.

But it is often strangely forgotten that there are such things as widows, left such in the prime of life, and quite as much needing occupation as if they had remained single. Thus, then, another chance must fairly be added to our one in four that a woman may need such a pursuit as we have supposed. She may never marry, or having married she may be left a childless widow, or a widow whose few children occupy but a portion of her time. Suppose, for instance, she has been a physician. How often would the possibility of returning to her early profession be an invaluable resource after her husband's death! The greatest female mathematician living, was saved from despairing sorrow in widowhood, by throwing herself afresh into the studies of her youth.

It may be a pleasantly romantic idea to some minds, that of woman growing up solely with the hope of becoming some man's devoted wife, marrying the first that offers, and when he dies, becoming a sort of moral Suttee whose heart is supposed to be henceforth dead and in ashes. But it is quite clear that Providence can never have designed any such order of things. All the infinite tenderness and

devotion he has placed in women's hearts, though meant to make marriage blessed and happy, and diffusing as from a hearth of warm affections, kindness and love on all around, is yet meant to be subordinated to the great purposes of the existence of all rational souls-the approximation to God through virtue. With reverence be it spoken, GoD is the only true center of life for us all, not any creature he has made. "To live unto God" is the law for man and woman alike. Whoever strives to do this will neither spend youth in longing for happiness which may be withheld, nor age in despair for that which may be withdrawn.

To resume. It appears that from every point of view in which we regard the subject, it is desirable that women should have other aims, pursuits, and interests in life beside matrimony, and that by possessing them they are guaranteed against being driven into unloving marriages, and rendered more fitted for loving ones; while their single life, whether in maidenhood or widowhood, is made useful and happy.

Before closing this part of the subject, we can not but add a few words to express our amused surprise at the way in which the writers on this subject constantly concern themselves with the question of female celibacy, deplore it, abuse it, propose amazing remedies for it, but take little or no notice of the twenty-five per cent old bachelors (or thereabouts) who needs must exist to match the thirty per cent old maids. Their moral condition seems to excite no alarm, their lonely old age no foreboding compassion, their action on the community no reprobation. Nobody scolds them very seriously, unless some stray Belgravian grandmother. All the alarm, compassion, reprobation, and scoldings are reserved for the poor old maids. But of the two, which of the parties is the chief delinquent? The Zend Avesta, as translated by Anquetil du Perron, contains somewhere this awful denunciation: "That damsel who, having reached the age of eighteen, shall refuse to marry, must remain in hell till the Resurrection!" A severe penalty, doubtless, for the crime, and wonderful to meet in the mild creed of Zoroaster, where no greater punishment is allotted to any offense whatsoever. Were these Guebre young ladies so terribly cruel, and mazdiesnans (true believers) so desperately enamored? Are we to imagine the