Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/91

 his trials and tribulations in his half-judicial mediation between reckless sailors and tyrannical ship- masters. His countrymen were often brought face to face with him in the most unpleasant aspects of their national character. That he performed his official functions with integrity and _ intelligence, there can be little doubt; but it is perhaps no reflection on his successor to know that the office has never been filled before nor since by so great a man.

If the novel-readers of the last ten years could have safely counted upon any one for fiction, pure and simple, without the suggestion of any extrinsic. purpose, moral or instructive, that one would have been Wilkie Collins. In all the fascinating intricacies of his wonderful plots, they felt that nothing was expected of them more than their breathless attention; that their sympathies, political or social, were not to be called upon, and that with the last evolution of the plot, and disclosure of the mystery, their responsibility to the novelist ended. He had fulfilled his duty by interesting them —a work requiring no little effort and talent; they had fulfilled theirs by being interested—a work requiring absolutely no talent or effort whatever.

The reader can imagine the concern with which Mr. Collins' admirers will now learn that Mr. Collins has joined the goodly fellowship of the social reformers; that he now has a fell moral purpose, and that, to use an expressive Californianism, he is at present "going for" the Marriage Laws of Great Britain. Mr. Reade's Trades Union outrages, Mr. Disraeli's Catholic tempest in a Protestant tea-pot, are as nothing to this. That household criticism of the popular novel, which used to content itself with the mere application of such adjectives as "nice" or "horrid" to the several characters; which never carried its speculations beyond wondering "how it would end," or "what was the secret"—all this must now be changed. Paterfamilias must be ready to explain the Parliamentary Acts to his family circle; young gentlemen must; among their other accomplishments, study up decisions of Scotch and Irish Judges, for the edification of their fair friends. For you men know all about these things, will be the unanswerable logic of these feminine critics; some of whom will find, doubtless, a convincing argument in favor of female suffrage.

Thus forewarned and prepared, Mr. Collins' friends may receive him on his old footing. For his ulterior social object does not hurt his story; even the legal quotations which are necessary for his purpose are not so technical but that they may be understood by the most careless reader. The following statement of the central fact in the "Prologue" is an instance of this perspicuity:

"Mr. Delamayn stated the law, as that law still stands—to the disgrace of the English Legislature and the English Nation.

By the Irish Statute of George the Second,' he said, 'every marriage celebrated by a Popish priest between two Protestants, or between a Papist and any person who has been a Protestant within twelve months before the marriage, is declared null and void. And by two other Acts of the same reign such a celebration of marriage is made a felony on the part of the priest. The clergy in Ireland of other religious denominations have been relieved from this law. But it still remains in force so far as the Roman Catholic priesthood is concerned.'

Is such a state of things possible in the age we live in!' exclaimed Mr. Kendrew.

"Mr. Delamayn smiled. He had outgrown the customary illusions as to the age we live in.

There are other instances in which the Irish marriage-law presents some curious anomalies of its own,' he went on. 'It is felony, as I have just told you, for a Roman Catholic priest to celebrate a marriage which may be lawfully celebrated by a parochial clergyman, a Presbyterian minister, and a Nonconformist minister. It is also felony (by another law) on the part of a parochial clergyman to celebrate a marriage that may be lawfully celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest. And it is again felony (by yet another law) for a Presbyterian minister and a Non-conformist minister to celebrate a marriage which may be lawfully celebrated by a clergyman of the Established Church.

With these facts the reader will readily understand that Mr. Collins has the conditions for any number of unhappy marriages, and any amount of domestic unhappiness. But he is sparing of his material. The above illustration of the 'Irish marriage,'"' in which a husband takes advantage of the law to discard and displace a faithful wife, to make room for a later choice, is only an introduction, or prologue, to the real story, which is about a Scottish marriage, in which the