It is estimated that more than fifty thousand of the women of Paris live in a state of concubinage, which, in a population of two millions, is something enormous. The proportion is startling, but more from the facility attained there for procuring statistics than from the fact itself. Actualities, whether painful or not, are known and recorded in that capital, instead of being unsuspected, as they are likely to be elsewhere. This vast number of unchaste women are by no means professional courtesans,—probably five thousand would include all of these,—but embrace half a dozen grades of illicit relations. [Sidenote: CAUSE OF PARISIAN WICKEDNESS.] The causes that contribute to prostitution in France are, first, the unwillingness of men of education and position to marry girls who are poor, and can therefore have no marriage portion. Wedlock among the Parisians is far less sentimental and romantic than it is with us. It a species of one-sided covenant and partnership, in which the wife is expected to be loyal, and the husband to do as he pleases. He cares less for sympathy and affinity than he would if he did not expect to seek them outside of the domestic circle. He marries generally for practical reasons; because it will benefit him socially, or be of substantial advantage. In consequence of this, young women in humble circumstances are little likely to be wedded. They have hearts if they have not incomes, and when their affections are enlisted, they listen to the voice of Nature without waiting for the sanction of the priest. It is not the custom, either, in France for men or women to wed out of their station, though love or passion does not respect social lines or distinctions in that country more than in any other. Hence it may be seen that unwedded wives must be numerous in Paris. Another cause is the draft that the army makes upon the young men of the country. Compelled to enter the military service before they are married, their habits are such, after they have remained in the army the allotted time, as do not conduce to matrimony. The whole land is drained for the sake of steel-and-gunpowder parade. Thousands and tens of thousands of people who have no interest whatever in, and are only made the worse for, war, are compelled to furnish its sinews at a ruinous cost to themselves.