The Law of Husband and Wile, by a Solicitor, is
an awful work. Since the table which was given from Mount Sinai, and which may be seen at this day inscribed in gilt letters above all Communion- tables, surely there never was a collection of legal enactments of such dreadful import. The mere enumeration of the evils which husbands and wives are heirs to, has positively made us ill. What a connexion is this, if it be beset with so many horrors ! Oh! that a man should put an enemy into his bed to steal away his peace ! But is this so ? is not this Solicitor frightening us to death that he may put Gs. 8d. into his pocket ? are all these things pos- sible? may we be this and that and that, and is our remedy only so and so ? Alas ! alas! whoever it was that put this fatal book be- fore us, let him recal it : it lies at the Publishing-office, in a double case of whity-brown, lest its contagion, worse than cholera, should seize upon the holder, and straightway teach him how bone of one bone may become two bones, and flesh of one flesh as different as mutton and pork. If a man wants to put away his wife, let him read this book : if a woman is discontented with her husband, and is lookinc, else- where, the means are here. If there is property and it should unhappily be the cause of dissension, it may here be seen how it may be made matter of litigation : if a husband should wish to imprison his wife, this hook will teach him how far he has the law on his side ; and if she should wish to do something very wrong in return, the book has all kinds of cases in point—and out of point. In short, this work is the Morbid Anatomy of Marriage : when the breath that animated the sacred connexion is gone, and the feelings which led to its union are extinct, then haul the body on to the dissecting-board,—the Law of Husband and Wife is the Connubial Anatomist's Manual.
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