formerly, where the practice of divorce obtained
to a degree tolerated nowhere else in Christendom, it occasionally
happened that, after a legal separation and intermediate marriages
(sanctioned also by the law), the original pair, set free once more
by death or _second divorce_, resumed their first ties--a condition
of things which appears monstrous, considered as that which we call
marriage, with the English and American branch of the Anglo-Saxon
family, the holiest of human ties; with Roman Catholic Christians,
an indissoluble bond, sacred as a sacrament of their Church.

Without being able to determine the question satisfactorily in my
own mind with reference to the supposed conclusion of the play of
"The Stranger," in which Mr. Wilson said that the husband, receiving
his repentant wife in his arms, was highly offensive to all
morality, which demanded imperatively her absolute rejection and
punishment, I began to consider what sort of escape from punishment
it might be which would probably follow the forgiveness of her
husband, her readmission to her home, and the renewal of her
intercourse with her children. In Kotzebue's play the persons are
all German, and their nationality has to be borne in mind in
contemplating Waldburg's possible forgiveness of his wife.
Steinforth, his dearest friend, and a man of the highest honor and
morality (as conceived by the author), urges upon Waldburg the
pardon of Adelaide; urges it almost as a duty, and zealously assists
Madame von Wintersen's plan of bringing the unhappy people together,
and effecting a reconciliation between them by means of the
unexpected sight of their children. Moreover, when Waldburg rejects
his friend's advice and entreaties that he will forgive his wife,
it is hardly upon the ground of any deep moral turpitude involved in
such a forgiveness, but upon the score of the insupportable
humiliation of reappearing in the great world of German society to
which they both belong with "his runaway wife on his arm," and the
"whispering, pointing, jeering" of which their reconciliation would
be the object, winding up with the irrevocable "Never! never!
never!"

Nevertheless, in Kotzebue's play he does receive his wife in his
arms as the curtain falls, and the German public go home comforted
in believing her forgiven. I do not