The prospect of matrimony, viewed at the distance of a day or two, is sufficiently distressing; but to stand on the utmost verge of the gulf, to oscillate within its jaws in a vestry-room, while an easy, calculating clerk looms before you, the last landmark on the boundaries of the world, is terrible indeed. In Dante’s “Divina Comedia” men stand transfixed by the eyes of serpents--serpents lie along the ground transfixed by the eyes of men: gradually the bodies of the snakes sprout limbs--they grow erect, and harden into men; gradually the features of the men fall away, their limbs shrink into them, and, with a writhe, they are become snakes--still with set eyes, set ready to renew at once the transformation, according to their doom. If this, as it appears to be, is the most terrible thing either in fact or imagination, it is so only because of its eternal repetition; otherwise, it would have to make room beside it for the equal horror of waiting in a vestry-room for the parson of your nuptials. But, practically, time is a fiction to all but clock-makers, and one may taste eternity in ten minutes under favoring circumstances; in such a case, at least, this comparison of horrors holds good to those who have to endure the latter, as Godwin and a young man similarly fated--who, seated at opposite extremes of the room, endeavored to rival each other in nonchalance--could have attested. Eternity in their particular case expired only at the quarter chime, when the priest entered apologetically. Prayers were read--responses meek and mild were given in doubt that they might prove groans, or worse, on obtaining utterance, and in a few minutes they were married. _Sic transit gloria mundi!_