Marriage and civilization we might almost call synonymous terms. Marriage was at least the greatest conquest made by primitive man over himself, and the indispensable preliminary to a higher civilization. Nor has any mode yet been discovered of rearing full-formed and efficient men capable of self-control, patriotism, and high principle, except the union of both parents striving for that end with cordial resolution longer than an average life-time. It is upon this most sacred of all institutions that the French caricaturists of the Gavarni school pour ceaseless scorn and contempt. As I write these lines, my eyes fall upon one of the last numbers of a comic sheet published in Paris, on the first page of which there is a picture which illustrates this propensity. A dissolute-looking woman, smoking a cigarette, is conversing with a boy in buttons who has applied for a place in her household. "How old are you?" she asks. "Eleven, madame." "And your name?" "Joseph!" Upon this innocent reply the woman makes a comment which is truly comic, but very Gavarnian: "So young, and already he calls himself Joseph!" [Illustration: A Poultice for Two--Sympathy and Economy.--From _Impressions de Ménage_, by Gavarni.] Among the heaps of albums to be found in a French collection we turn with particular curiosity to those which satirize the child life of France. Gavarni's celebrated series of "Enfants Terribles" has gone round the world, and called forth child satire in many lands. The presence of children in his pictures does not long divert this artist from his ruling theme. One of his terrible children, a boy of four, prattles innocently to his mother in this strain: "Nurse is going to get up very early, now that you have come home, mamma. Goodness! while you were in the country she always had her breakfast in bed, and it was papa who took in the milk and lighted the fire. But wasn't the coffee jolly sweet, though!" Another alarming boy of the same age, who is climbing up his father's chair and wearing his father's hat, all so merry and innocent, discourses thus to the petrified author of his being: "Who is Mr. Albert? Oh, he is a gentleman belonging to the Jardin des Plantes, who comes every day to explain the animals to mamma; a large man with mustaches, whom you don't know. He didn't come to-day until after they had shut up the monkeys. You ought to have seen how nicely mamma entertained him. Oh dear!" (discovering a bald place on papa's pate) "you have hardly any hair upon the top of your head, papa!" In a third picture both parents are exhibited seated side by side upon a sofa, and the terrible boy addresses his mother thus: "Mamma, isn't that little mustache comb which Cornelia found in your bedroom this morning for me?" Another sketch shows us father, mother, and terrible boy taking a walk in the streets of Paris. A dandy, in the likeness of Gavarni himself, goes by, with his cane in his mouth, and his face fixed so as to seem not to see them.