Is it asked, whether by my above remarks I intend to imply that the conjugal approach should never be indulged in, save for the sole purpose of begetting children? I hold no such opinion. The case is a very parallel one to that concerning diet. Had it been intended that we should confine ourselves, in amount and character of food, to only so much as would barely support life, and this of the simplest character, we should hardly have been supplied with such exquisitely sensitive gustatory nerves. It cannot be said that this was necessary to insure a proper consumption of food, for the languor and craving induced by fasting would have been sufficient for this. The pleasures of the table, restrained within due bounds, serve not only to enhance the comfort of the individual, but they form that centre of social attraction which serves to cement friendships, and to increase as well as to render permanent the sweet communion of each regularly assembling family circle. And so with the pleasures of venery. Restrained within due bounds as to frequency, they serve to add a charm to life, and to give fresh courage for enduring all its vicissitudes. But to gain these, one single rule must be observed: it is this—that the husband compel his wife to nothing that she herself does not freely assent to. A forced union is even worse than the solitary vice, whose baneful character was alluded to in an earlier portion of this essay. It is even worse, for it is compelling an unwilling and often a chaste-minded person to pander to the basest of lusts. When such habits exist, we are not wholly to blame the woman if she seek to avert her impending maternity, even though at the risk of her life; forced upon her, it is repulsive, and her whole nature rebels, even her most natural of instincts. It is rather the husband who is to be condemned; his selfish hardness of heart, his brutality, are the cause of her crime. VII. ARGUMENTS AND COUNTER ARGUMENTS AS TO DIVORCE. The ease with which marriages are consummated in this country, and their bonds loosed again, are among the features of our social system that are most wonderful to foreigners.[39] Some of our States have acquired an unenviable reputation as places of unshacklement for those who tire of their self-imposed burdens, and journeys have repeatedly been made, of hundreds of miles, that, by a short sojourn at this distance from home, the lenient legal requisitions might be complied with, and the knot unloosed that in old time only death could sever.