(2.) One notes in Milton's first Divorce Tract, as in much else of his controversial writing, a preference for the theoretical over what may be called the practical style of argument. The neglect of practical details in his reasoning throughout this particular Tract amounts to what might be called greenness or innocence. What are the questions with which an opponent of the "practical" type would have immediately tried to pose Milton, or which such an one would now object to his doctrine? No one can miss them. In a case where divorce is desired by the man only, what is to become of the divorced wife? Is not the damage of her prospects by the fact that she has once been married, if but for a month, something to be taken into account? It is not in marriage as it may be in other partnerships. The poor girl that has been once married returns to her father or her friends an article of suddenly diminished value in the general estimation. What provision is to be made for this? Then, should there be children, what are to be the arrangements? Or again, suppose the case, under the new Divorce Law, of a man who has a weakness for a succession of wives--a private Henry the Eighth. He marries No. 1, and, after a while, on the plea that he does not find that she suits him, he gives her a bill of divorcement; No. 2 comes and is treated in like manner; and so on, till the brutal rascal, undeniably free from all legal censure, may be living in the centre of a perfect solar system of his discarded wives, moving in nearer or farther orbits round him, according to the times when they were thrown off, and each with her one or two satellites of little darlings! To be sure, there is the public oath which, it is supposed, might have to be taken in every case of divorce; but what would such a blackguard care for any number of such oaths? Besides, you put it to him by his oath to declare that in his conscience he believes the incompatibility between himself and his wife to be radical and irremediable, and that he does not find that he comes within Christ's meaning in that famous passage of the Sermon on the Mount in which he Christianized the Mosaic Law of Divorce. What does such a fellow know of Christ's meaning? He will swear, and according to your new Law he need only swear, according to his own standard of fitness; which may be that variety is a _sine quâ non_ for him, or that No. 2 is intolerable when No. 3 is on the horizon. How, in the terms of the new Law, is such licence to sheer libertinism to be avoided? These and other such questions are suggested here not as necessarily fatal to Milton's doctrine: in fact, in certain countries, since Milton's time, the most thorough practical consideration of them has not impeded modifications of the Marriage Law in the direction heralded by Milton. They are suggested as indicating Milton's rapidity, his impatience, or, if we choose so to call it, his dauntless faith in ideas and first principles. It is