The union of Booth and Miss Santlow was as productive of happiness as that of Betterton and Miss Saunderson. Indeed, with some few exceptions, the marriages of English players have been generally so. As much, perhaps, can hardly be said of the alliances of French actors. Molière had but a miserable time of it with Mademoiselle Béjart; but he revenged himself by producing domestic incidents of a stormy and aggravating nature, on the stage. The _status_ of the French players was even lower, in one respect, than that of their English brethren. The French ecclesiastical law did not allow of marrying or giving in marriage amongst actors. They were excommunicated, by the mere fact that they were stage-players. The Church refused them the Sacrament of Marriage, and a loving couple who desired to be honestly wed, were driven into lying. It was their habit to retire from their profession, get married as individuals who had no vocation, and the honeymoon over, to return again to the stage and their impatient public. The Church was aware of the subterfuge, and did its utmost to establish the concubinage of parties thus united; but civil law and royal influence invariably declared that these marriages were valid, seeing that the contracting parties were not excommunicated actors when the ceremony was performed, whatever they may have been a month before, or a month after. No such difficulties as these had to be encountered by Booth and Miss Santlow; and the former lost no opportunity to render justice to the excellence of his wife. This actor's leisure was a learned leisure. Once, in his poetic vein, when turning an ode of his favourite _Horace_ into English, he went into an original digression on the becomingness of a married life, and the peculiar felicity it had brought to himself. Thus sang the Benedict when the union was a few brief years old:-- "Happy the hour when first our souls were joined! The social virtues and the cheerful mind Have ever crowned our days, beguiled our pain; Strangers to discord and her clamorous train. Connubial friendship, hail! but haste away, The lark and nightingale reproach thy stay; From splendid theatres to rural scenes, Joyous retire! so bounteous Heav'n ordains. There we may dwell in peace. There bless the rising morn, and flow'ry field, Charm'd with the guiltless sports the woods and waters yield."