age with which the century commenced.

Fortunately for us, the men of that period were far too practical to allow of metaphysics remaining in the same unprofitable condition in which it had existed from the days of Aristotle to the days of Hamilton and Mansel-a mere analysis of mental structure, possessing no influence on the vast economy of human life. It is scarcely credible the amount of suffering our ancestors endured before metaphysics had become an absolute science hopelessly endured, without so much as dreaming of a remedy. In evidence of this we may turn to the early records of this very Court for Divorce, and stronger even than that testimony, to the whole tone of their romantic literature. The main interest of all their highest fiction was based upon an idea of the contrariety of the human heart. Contrariety they called it in their blind ignorance, little witting that the human heart is as absolutely governed by invariable laws as are the ebb and flow of the rest less ocean.

We assure our readers we are stating a sober historical fact when we tell them that even far later than the year 1860, people of education and position in society desiring to enter into the estate of matrimony, were accustomed to consult their lawyer as regarded the disposition of their property, and perhaps even their medical adviser, if doubtful on the score of health; but they totally ignored anything approaching to professional advice as to compatibility of temperament or disposition, basing their hopes of matrimonial happiness on mere impulsive feeling

which, alas for them! as the annals of that Divorce Court prove, frequently turned out utterly delusive, simply a transient passion, in nowise indicative of the normal condition of the heart.

It is almost impossible for us to realize such a condition of society; to imagine that fearful union, which must so often have occurred, of antagonistic natures bound together with the strongest laws divine and human; noble natures, it may be, fretting against the galling bonds

riveted together on the faith of an evanescent impulse-mutually destructive of their own happiness, and yet sternly enduring the evil till death broke the terrible yoke.

Such a melancholy spectacle as this must have been often witnessed. And then those natures of less strength-though perhaps, under happier circumstances, capable of much excellence and virtue-we read their story in the records of that court, and in a certain order of the romantic literature of the period.

No wonder in those days men talked of the lottery of marriage,' and oftentimes wisely hesitated to cast their happiness in such an uncertain venture.

It appears that the Divorce Court was invented as a clumsy remedy for this unfortunate state of affairs. 'If you cannot prevent this misery,' was the cry, at least afford us some cure.' Perhaps the saddest point in early history of the jurisdiction of that court was the miserably mistaken use made of that vast amount of precedents which quickly accumulated. An unfortunate couple obtained a sentence of divorce; that case became a precedent for still further facilitating the destruction of the marriage bond; so, like the glacial force, these precedents attained a mighty weight of destructive power, crushing down the social fabric.

From our own experience in these days, we may safely affirm that the legal profession of that period was only too ready to assist in this creation of precedents-if society lost, they gained. On the other hand, a terrified protest arose from the sober and respectable people in the land against the court, which, as they alleged, was the cause of such danger to the community-a most illogical cry; the court had not created the evil, and the cure, bad as it might be, was preferable to the disease.

At last society was rescued from a totally unexpected quarter.

That great man, whose statue the gratitude of our age has reared, high in the air, above the old marble arch of the Victorian era, following in our blind reverence for the past the

doubtful taste of that period of eclectic art-that great intellect beheld, with all the force of profound intuition, the possibility of converting those very precedents of domestic destruction into materials for the preservation of morality, nay, as the sequel has proved, into a foundation for the domestic happiness we now enjoy. In common with the highest intellects of his day, he was fired with the pervading metaphysical enthusiasm; but he felt, with bitterness of heart, how utterly futile all this enthusiasm would be unless those ascertained laws concerning the mental and moral structure of man the species, could be applied to man the individual.

Consider for a moment how unavailable the highest knowledge of therapeutics would remain unless united to the power of forming a diagnosis of individual disease; and yet, as regards psychology, this was the very disadvantage under which our ancestors laboured.

Thanks to our system of refined education, each one of us ought after a few years to be able to comprehend his own mental structure, and as our common saying has it, 'A man is a fool or a metaphysician at forty.' Indeed it appears to us so perfectly natural that the qualified metaphysician should be able from what we term tendencies' to discover the idiosyncrasy of any given individual, just as our medical men are able from symptoms to infer the disease, that we may be almost excused if we sometimes overlook that immense amount of labour and research which has bestowed upon our age such an invaluable power.

Like all other great discoveries, this theory of the Newton of his day, if we may so call him who gave us the laws of our mental nature, met with the strongest opposition and ridicule. Nevertheless so great was the desire of the public to find some remedy for the evil which beset society, that a commission was appointed to test the soundness of the proposition. This commission was admirably adapted for its purpose. It consisted chiefly of persons who, from their vocation, were accustomed to analyze the workings

of the mind and heart, novelists and dramatists of the highest class, both men and women; to these were added, by way of neutralizing any errors that might arise from the mere imaginative element, two of the hardest-headed, matter-of-fact lawyers that the age produced.

It would appear that the metaphysicians of the day had so entirely restricted themselves to abstract considerations that they were found unequal to the acquisition of special facts concerning individual minds. To a select number, however, under the presidency of the great father of the theory, was confided the task of generalizing upon the facts which the commission from time to time laid before them.

The commission held its sittings in connection with the Court for Divorce, having its own special jurisdiction. The principals of every divorce suit, after passing through the ordinary procedure of the court, were brought before the commission, and subjected to a searching examination as to their mental constitutions, the elements of antagonism in their respective natures being carefully evolved in truth, the commission was none other than a great school of the anatomy of the heart; its members followed not the ordering of the muscles, nor the sinuosities of the nervous fibrethey sought to follow the mazy courses of human motive, to discover an undeviating law where men had hitherto only found confusion.

It was a sublime conception-the diagnosis of the disease was to afford the basis of a grand system of effectual cure. The labour was, indeed, gigantic; but in the course of years, through the gradual accumulation, verification, and accurate testing of evidence, it became at length possible to affirm, with the greatest accuracy, the various forms of character which could exist in harmony one with the other, as well as those in the union of which discord must prove the inevitable result.

Yet the labour was not ended here it required all the power of that greatest intellect of his day to lay down the laws through which, by tendencies or symptoms, might

be discovered the real underlying nature of the mind and heart, as distinguished from that superficial and evanescent expression of feeling, arising from mere casualty, which had so perplexed and bewildered mankind in earlier days-in a word, the power of forming a true diagnosis of the character of any given individual.

But the work was achieved at last-that marvellous work, compared to which those laboured earthworks and cuttings of the nineteenth century, useless now through our electric system of locomotion and method of aërial navigation, sink into insignificance. A new science was given to the world-metaphysics, in the strength of its new signification, took its place among the learned societies of the realm.

The

Royal College of Metaphysicians was formed, taking precedence, by Royal Charter, inasmuch as mind is superior to body, of the Royal College of Physicians; but yet, inasmuch as mind is so intimately connected with body, the two colleges were to a certain extent associated together, and the new college took possession of the premises formerly occupied by the Union Club; and so those two great professions, which hold the keys of the mystery of mind and body, dwell harmoniously in that range of building which constitutes one side of the finest site in Europe,' where a column of water rises gloriously, from the summit of the old Nelson monument, to the height of a thousand feet-attesting the grandeur of our hydraulic power, in comparison with the mean granite hand-basins and puny jets which contented our forefathers.

Metaphysicians in ordinary and extraordinary were appointed to the royal family; and all persons of common sense had recourse to the metaphysician in the same way that they formerly had recourse to the family doctor and lawyer; and so, at last, that highest element of humanity, the mind, received the same professional attention which men had hitherto been satisfied to afford merely to body and estate. And as we well know, to our great profit, at the present day, it is as

much our custom to consult the metaphysician on any question of mental irritation, as it is our custom to consult the doctor upon a derangement of the physical organs.

However, as may be readily supposed, when the new science was first promulgated, there were not a few ignorant and prejudiced people who denied its truth-who obstinately persisted in the old method of matrimonial election, refusing to submit their characters to the scrutiny of the metaphysician, and marrying on the chance system of mere impulse. But the misery which attended these wretched persons vindicated the truth of the science. The Divorce Court was still crowded with suitors, while those who had availed themselves of the metaphysician's advice lived a life of unbroken matrimonial happiness. The fact became so patent that at last the celebrated Marriage Certificate Act' was passed, rendering all marriages null and void unless upon the license of a duly qualified metaphysician, who is required to certify, on oath, as to the mental compatibility of the contracting parties.

The principle of this Act is precisely the same as that which governed our ancestors with regard to compulsory vaccination. A great amount of absurd argument was put forward with respect to the liberty of the subject, the right of people to marry as they like and take the consequences. But it was held, and wisely held, by a large majority, both in and out of Parliament, that although people might, as a general principle, possess an indisputable right to make themselves miserable, yet the scandal of their discord must not be allowed to offend public morality and public feeling on such an important social question as marriage. At last, after a prolonged opposition, the Act, which was to render harmony the inevitable law of married life, was passed. From that day the business of the Divorce Court dwindled away, being confined solely to persons who had married prior to the passing of the Act.

Perhaps the most wonderful

change which the new science has effected is to be found in the estimate we now hold concerning woman's character. If we refer to the literature of our ancestors we discover innumerable depreciating epithets and similes applied to women - thus, As fickle as a

woman,' 'Woman a weathercock.' Now mark the noble words of our own laureate

'Oh! woman, firm is thy heart as the adamantine rock.'

Woman's love, true as the magnet to the pole, Undeviating, sure-.'

It is, indeed, a sublime reflection that our age has vindicated woman from the reproach which, from the earliest times, has been attached to her character-a matter in which we may take greater pride than in our last grand triumph over material obstacles, which a great poet of past days, in the strength of his poetic foresight, beheld

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;'

for surely if we are proud of fathoming the depths of the upper air, of having reduced to an absolute law the varying currents of the atmosphere and the fierce conflicts of the winds, whereby we are enabled to navigate the golden lakes of sun

set, and sail among the pearl mountains of the sky-we have a right to be far prouder of fathoming the mystery of woman's nature, and beholding a law of perfect harmony where our forefathers only beheld confusion.

And though there may be some few foolish sentimentalists who prate of the good old times, and proclaim that the gradual elimination of the element of chance from the world is destroying the dash and interest of human life; that matrimony has even become vapid, because happiness has become its inevitable law, instead of being dependent on individual effort and individual goodness; that whereas the mind of man was constructed eminently to contain the two great principles of faith and hope, whose very vitality is based upon the existence of doubt: therefore, every new law, mental or physical, which replaces doubt by certainty, causes a painful vacuum in the mind of man, and destroys some of the fresh effervescence of the cup of life. But we say, and all wise men will say it too, let these foolish ones grumble as they will at the law of happiness-better a monotony of happiness than the excitement of doubt!-still champagne for philosophers; air bubbles for boys. G. U. S.