il, might be the tempter
himself, disguised as a Jesuit."

One prelate predicts in sorrow that we are sending the priests to
martyrdom.

Alas, this martyrdom is what they themselves demand, either aloud or in
secret, namely--marriage.

We think, without enumerating the too well known inconveniences of
their present state, that if the priest is to advise the family, it is
good for him to know what a family is; that as a married man, of a
mature age and experience, one who has loved and suffered, and whom
domestic affections have enlightened upon the mysteries of moral life,
which are not to be learned by guessing, he would possess at the same
time more affection and more wisdom.

It is true the defenders of the clergy have lately drawn such a picture
of marriage, that many persons perhaps will henceforth dread the
engagement. They have far exceeded the very worst things that
novelists and modern socialists have ever said against the _legal
union_. Marriage, which lovers imprudently seek as a confirmation of
love, is, according to them, but a warfare: we marry in order to fight.
It is impossible to degrade lower the virtue of matrimony. The
sacrament of union, according to these doctors, is useless, and can do
nothing unless a third party be always present between the
partners--_i.e._, the combatants--to separate them.

It had been generally believed that two persons were sufficient for
matrimony: but this is all altered; and we have the new system, as set
forth by themselves, composed of three elements: 1st, _man_, the
strong, the violent; 2ndly, _woman_, a being naturally weak; 3rdly, the
_priest_, born a man, and strong, but who is kind enough to become weak
and resemble woman; and who, participating thus in both natures, may
interpose between them.

Interpose! interfere between two persons who were to be henceforth but
one! This changes wonderfully the idea which, from the beginning of
the world, has been entertained of marriage.

But this is not all; they avow that they do not pretend to make an
impartial interference that might favour each of the parties, according
to reason. No, they address themselves exclusively to the wife: she it
is whom they undertake to protect against her natural protector. They
offer to league with her in order to transform the husband. If it were
once firmly established that marriage, instead of being unity in two
persons, is a league of one of them with a stranger, it woul