expensive, which was worse, since men preferred to spend their money on themselves--a state of affairs toward which a certain class is rapidly drifting to-day, if it is not there already. Statesmen began to be alarmed. “If it were possible to do without wives, great cares would be spared us,” said Metellus in an address to the Senate; “but since nature has decreed that we cannot live without a wife, nor comfortably with one, let us bear the burden manfully, and look to the perpetuity of the State rather than to our own satisfaction.” It never seems to have occurred to these consistent descendants of Adam to consider the burdens of the woman at all. On her side, a rich woman hesitated to take a master, if she was independent enough to have any choice, which was rare, and without a dowry she was quite sure of finding a capricious one, who would not scruple to neglect her. Some guaranties she must have, and these men did not like to give. So men and women alike combined against the existing order of things, men for the right to do precisely as they pleased, women for the right of choice in husbands and of breaking chains when they became intolerable. It has often been stated, by moralists over-anxious to make out a case, that this aversion to marriage, on the part of men, was due to the laxity of women. Of this I do not find any evidence. It was due in part to the restrictions already mentioned, and in part to the increasing luxury which, added to the long habit of absolute power, led to impatience of any domestic obligations, and a riot of the senses, as it has always done, before and since. Besides, there were the brilliant Oriental women who began to flock to Rome, bringing with them Hellenic tastes, with subtle fascinations that stole away the hearts of men and threatened a state of affairs similar to that which existed in Athens. This the spirited Roman women could not tolerate. To be thrust by strangers into a secondary place was not to be thought of by these proud patricians, who refused to put themselves in a position where such neglect was possible. They began to realize that the old virtues did not suffice to hold men’s wandering fancies. It was very well to carve on a woman’s tombstone, as a last word of praise, an epitaph like this: “Gentle in words, graceful in manner; she loved her husband devotedly; she kept her house, she spun wool.” But what availed it when this husband left her to the companionship of her duties and her virtues, while he gave what he called his affections to those who had fewer virtues and more accomplishments? It was not laxity of morals, but lack of intelligence and culture, that stood in the way of the Roman woman in the days when Greek literature, Greek art, and Greek refinement first came into fashion. That she protested against traditions which made it superfluous, if not dangerous, to cultivate her intellect, may fairly be assumed. But she had a powerful ally. On