occasionally met him, but bore the unexpected trial, when it came, with dignity and sweetness. When Godwin sought her in marriage, he knew, of course, that no legal ties bound her. Mary saw no harm in using the liberty that remained to her. "Why could she not have remained single?" said the world; but had the world been so just and kind to her, that we could expect her to resist the influence of a generous and courageous love? Had she lived in this country, and been divorced by the laws of Indiana, society would have been silent; but the real evil would have been the same. "Never did there exist a woman," said her husband, "who might with less fear expose her actions, and call upon the universe to judge them." I believe this to be true so far as her own relations were concerned; and I believe, that, by her second marriage, she meant to exercise a right of protest against existing laws, which two of the most gifted children of the nineteenth century have exercised again in our own time with emphasis. It requires a philosophic mind to see the relation of the individual to the state: heroic, indeed, is the spirit which, perceiving it, braves the common expectation by a defiant life. On the other hand, it is by no prejudice that we demand this account of each person's private affairs. It is a demand born of an ill-defined, dimly entertained, but still a just idea of the relations of God, the family, and the state. I ought not to say so much, without adding that no one in this country can adequately judge of the pressure of the marriage laws as they still exist in England. What is resisted, is, in most instances, what no American woman would be expected to bear; but for England, as for this country, I rest in the confident hope that a right adjustment of woman's relation to society will change healthfully all existing legislation. Such legislation as that of Indiana does not seem to me an advance, although it may have been demanded by an _advancing_ public sentiment.