And so with me. When the friendly night
   O'er my sleepless pillow lingers,
Yon star, I think, is the daisy white
   I placed in her lifeless fingers.

HAPPY AND UNHAPPY COUPLES.

MATRIMONY is either the most happy or the
most wretched condition of human life. It is
therefore not by any to be unadvisedly and
lightly enterprised. But civilised nations are
not quite agreed as to the degree of facility
which ought to be permitted of marrying in
haste and repenting at leisure; while some allow
this most solemn engagement to be contracted
with the utmost ease, others surround it with so
many formalities and checks, that there are
cases in which it is difficult to get married at all.
The golden mean between these two extremes
is most desirable for a people to arrive at, and
is well worthy of all the attention that the
philosopher and the legislator can bestow upon it.
We therefore open with more than common
interest a book by M. Auguste Carlier, in which
he compares marriage in the United States with
that which is lawful in England and in France.

The last of these three countries has adopted
the plan of fencing in marriage with many
impediments. France is as exclusive and
protectionist in her matrimonial as in her
commercial intercourse. In matters connubial, she
yields not the slightest international reciprocity.
Most countries allow a marriage contracted
beyond their own limits, to be valid at home,
provided all the legal forms of the country in which
the marriage takes place have been complied
with. If an Englishman marry a Russian
lady, in Russia, and according to Russian law,
that marriage is good in England; but if a
Frenchman marry an English girl, in England,
and according to English law, that union may be
pronounced null and void in France, unless
every requirement of French law has been
obeyed.

Take a case, which is not imaginary in its
leading points. The Smiths have made money
and retired from business. They spend a winter
in Paris, and give handsome entertainments to
mixed assemblies of French and English. Mrs.
Smith is an excellent person, with no doubt
about her own talent for managing, and
a great idea of what money will do. Miss
Smith is charming and two-and-twenty; one of
her charms is three hundred a year, left by a
bachelor uncle, of which she is in full enjoyment.
Her brother brings to the house, the
only son of the Comte de Quelquechose, who is
seriously smitten. The De Quelquechoses would
be poor in England, but are rich in France.
Instead of being in debt, they put by a trifle
every year. Their tastes and manners are simple
and unpretending; but they are noble, and
believe themselves at heart formed of different
material from plebeian folk. They have in
Burgundy a dilapidated farm-house, which their
neighbours call " the château," surrounded with
vineyards; they have a dingy suite of apartments
in Paris. Madame de Quelquechose farms
a portion of her own estate, transacts all business,
and does and is everything. Her son talks
to her about the Smiths; she consents to receive
a visit from Mrs. Smith.

Mrs. Smith calls too early, much too splendidly
attired; and, catching Madame de
Quelquechose in a charwoman's dress, doing
housemaid's work, has the weakness to display
patronising airs. Still, madame returns the call,
is pleased with the daughter, and might have
approved of her in the end, if she did not every
day detest the mother more and more. She
tells her son the alliance will not suit her, and
dismisses the matter from her thoughts. Mrs.
Smith, determined not to be beaten, allows the
young man's intimacy with her daughter to
increase. When madame hears of this, she
quietly observes, that young men are naturally
fond of amusement; she knows the game is in
her own hands.

The courtship has arrived at the marrying
point, but the lover is sure it is of no use to
ask his parents' consent. He is four-and-twenty.
Clever Mrs. Smith thinks there is
wisdom in the scheme of their getting married
in England, as they cannot get married in France.
Miss Smith goes to stay a month with an aunt
in London. Young Monsieur de Quelquechose
follows, and resides in the same parish for the
term prescribed by law. There is nothing
clandestine in the business. When the time arrives,
they are married, by banns, as a further precaution,
lest a license should be cavilled at. The
bride is given away by her brother. It is a
quiet wedding, not a runaway match.

The bridegroom announces his marriage to
his parents, in respectful terms, as an
accomplished fact, in which he hopes they will
acquiesce—though he does not exactly say so—
now they cannot help it. He returns with his
bride to France, and presents her to society, as
Madame de Quelquechose. But his parents
refuse to receive or acknowledge her. They
do more; they institute law proceedings, on
the ground that the marriage is invalid in
the absence of their consent and the fulfilment
of every detail of the French marriage law.
They gain their cause. The court pronounces
the English marriage certificate to be waste
paper. Miss Smith is compelled to drop the name
and title of De Quelquechose and to resume
her own; henceforth she can live with monsieur
as his mistress merely, and not as his wife; and
children so born are illegitimate in France. Miss
Smith has fallen into a most cruel position; she
is neither bond nor free. In France, she is a
single woman; in England, she is a lawful wife.
She is the widow of a living husband. She is
not married at all in France; and yet, were she
to marry in England, she would commit bigamy.
Such is the control which French parents are
able to exercise over their children's marriages.
Amongst the lower orders of society
especially, the power of withholding consent is
occasionally made the means of extorting
conditions favourable to the parents' selfish