to the commentaries which will be made in more than one home,
may serve as a pedestal for the imposing figure of Lycurgus, that
ancient legislator, to whom the Greeks are indebted for their
profoundest thoughts on the subject of marriage. May his system be
understood by future generations! And if modern manners are too much
given to softness to adopt his system in its entirety, they may at least
be imbued with the robust spirit of this admirable code.

3. ONE BED FOR BOTH.

On a night in December, Frederick the Great looked up at the sky, whose
stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which presages
heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in a great many
soldiers to Prussia."

The king expressed here, by a single phrase, the principal disadvantage
which results from the constant living together of married people.
Although it may be permitted to Napoleon and to Frederick to estimate
the value of a woman more or less according to the number of her
children, yet a husband of talent ought, according to the maxims of the
thirteenth Meditation, to consider child-begetting merely as a means of
defence, and it is for him to know to what extent it may take place.

The observation leads into mysteries from which the physiological Muse
recoils. She has been quite willing to enter the nuptial chambers
while they are occupied, but she is a virgin and a prude, and there are
occasions on which she retires. For, since it is at this passage in my
book that the Muse is inclined to put her white hands before her eyes so
as to see nothing, like the young girl looking through the interstices
of her tapering fingers, she will take advantage of this attack of
modesty, to administer a reprimand to our manners. In England the
nuptial chamber is a sacred place. The married couple alone have the
privilege of entering it, and more than one lady, we are told, makes her
bed herself. Of all the crazes which reign beyond the sea, why should
the only one which we despise be precisely that, whose grace and mystery
ought undoubtedly to meet the approval of all tender souls on this
continent? Refined women condemn the immodesty with which strangers
are introduced into the sanctuary of marriage. As for us, who have
energetically anathematized women who walk abroad at the time when they
expect soon to be confined, our opinion cannot be doubted. If we wish
the celibate to respect marriage, married