you what you had rather not hear. His business
and duty is to please you. But do not
blame a poor dealer with facts, who is forbidden
by the primary law of his duty to make things
pleasant on all occasions, and who would fail in
setting before you a true picture of any bygone
state of society, if he shrank from telling you
everything which is disagreeable in the telling.

Well, then, the beautiful Vittoria's third
suitor was his eminence the most reverend
sexagenarian Cardinal Bishop Farnese. Suitor?
Proposals? Why, the old man was a priest
irrevocably vowed to celibacy! Yes, indeed. That
was unquestionably the state of the case. And
yet his "proposals" had the energetic support of
two of the brothers. What! when, it has been
just related how two other brothers, acting
according to the ideas prevalent in that age,
thought it necessary to connive at their fallen
sister's murder, to purge the family of the
disgrace brought on it by her fault! And these
two Accoramboni brothers, too, were of "noble
birth." But they were reprobate castaways
then, these young Gubbio counts? Far from
it! One of them, we are assured by a monk
who has written a biography of Sixtus the Fifth,
was "a young man of saintly morals," and was
shortly afterwards made a bishop. And, doubtless,
if proposals of the nature of those of his
venerable eminence the Cardinal Farnese had
come from any one of the same rank as the
Accorambonis, the young brother of saintly morals
would have duly resented them. That is the
whole explanation of the matter. What but
honour could accrue to an obscure provincial
count's daughter and her family from any
connexion with a cardinal and a Farnese?

Such were the principles avowed and
recognised in the Roman world of the sixteenth
century.

MORE VERY COMMON LAW.

HAVING spoken of some of the legal incidents
of Mr. Blank's infancy, we purpose in this paper
to treat shortly of his marriage.

When we state, then, that since his last
appearance in these pages the ecclesiastical
machinery of St. George's, Hanover-square, has
been worked up to its highest pressure in the
service of our illustrative man, and that a bench
of clergymen and a full choral service have been
brought to bear upon him in his capacity of
bridegroom, we expect that no one (including
Sir C. Cresswell) will question the fact of his
marriage.

True, there were other means equally efficacious,
though possibly more plebeian, by which
he could have effected his object; but, as he
preferred a stylish wedding, we will not grudge him
that transient enjoyment. He might, had he been
so minded, have dispensed with the clerical
element entirely, and have been married by an
attorney and a retired pork-butcher in the dusty
seclusion of the Registrar's office; but more of
this hereafter. He might, let us for our present
purpose say, have been married after "due
publication of the banns," and, as this is possibly
the most popular form of the ceremony, we will
mention a point or two of law affecting it.

If it were our present business to criticise,
in place of illustrating, the law as we find
it, we should feel disposed to find a little
fault with this portion of our jurisprudence as
it now stands. We should feel disposed, for
example, to say that we think it affords too good
an opening to any man with a taste for matrimony
and a diversity of wives, to be consistent
with our national abstemiousness in that respect.
As thus: "Any marriage," the books tell us,
"solemnised after publication of banns in a
false name, when this false name has been given
with the privity and consent of both the parties,
can be set aside on application to Her Majesty's
Court of Divorce." As to what the law will
construe as "privity and consent" is at present
an open question, upon which the following
cases may throw a little light:

A certain amorous youth of nineteen fell
in love with his father's cook, aged thirty,
and made proposals of marriage to that domestic.
The cook, conjecturing that the marriage might
not be acceptable to her intended husband's
family, persuaded him, for the purpose of
concealment, to have the banns published in the
name of "John:" the youth's name being
"Henry John," and the cook being constantly
in the habit of addressing him by his first name.
They were married, but, as might have been
expected, they were not particularly happy; and a
suit having been instituted for the purpose of
setting aside the marriage, it was declared null
and void.

Again (to go no further back than to a case
decided before Sir C. Cresswell a short time
since), a young man, a minor, named Bower
Wood, published his banns, with his intended
wife's privity and consent, in the name of John
Wood: he having expectations from his uncle,
Mr. Bower, and not wishing to offend that
gentleman. On application to the Divorce Court,
the marriage was annulled, on the ground of this
false publication.

On the other hand, a man in humble circumstances,
named James Carpenter, married (we
quote a reported case) a woman named Susannah
Speuce. For some reason which is not
mentioned, the woman's name in the publication of
banns, was stated to be "Agnes Watts." During
the marriage ceremony, the clergyman addressed
her as "Agnes," and she, thinking that she was
to be married in her own proper name, looked at
Carpenter: whereupon he (surly bridegroom that
he was) told her to "hold her tongue." This
marriage, to the discomfiture, let us hope, of the
ungracious Carpenter, who wished to set it aside,
was afterwards upheld, on the ground that only
one of the parties was ignorant of the false
publication.

This is the present position of the law, with
which we are disposed to quarrel. So long as
divorce was a luxury not easily attainable, and,
consequently, not much sought after, this