What is wrong with modern marriage? A somewhat interesting correspondence upon this question appeared during the summer in a London morning paper, and hundreds of people took part in it, eager to give an answer in the light of their own experiences. It was obviously a popular, and certainly a timely, subject for discussion : popular, since almost every conceivable and inconceivable school of thought (or what passes for thought) was represented in that curious series of letters. It was, too, a timely subject, since something must be very wrong with modern marriage when so many thousands of men and women are hastening to the divorce courts to get their marriages dissolved. Still, it was not, nor was it intended to be, a serious or a useful discussion ; its headlines were meant to provide something catchy and piquant for the holiday-making public, and if they prevented the newspaper sales from going all to pieces during the dead season, the correspondence amply fulfilled its purpose.

Yet the whole matter of modern marriage is far more serious than those light-hearted inquisitors killing time by the summer sea suppose. Marriage is no longer the grave, deliberate, and stable settlement it used to be, and, outside the Catholic Church, there are few marriages to-day in which, from the first, divorce is not contemplated as a possible eventuality. Divorce has, in fact, now assumed the proportions of a scandal and of a portent unique in the annals of Christianity. True, it has been a commonplace in America for many years, but nothing American ever seems to surprise us over much : we look upon her as a young and irresponsible country, and it is the acknowledged privilege of youth and irresponsibility to shock its elders with impunity.