from whom erelong she divorced herself, and then became the wife of a most profligate man, Dolabella, who divorced his wife Fabia, it is said, to marry her. Cato the younger was married twice, and the second wife was worthy of him, but the first, Atilia, he divorced for adultery, after she had borne him two children. To these specimens, drawn from the families of the leading men at Rome, a rich collection might be added. If we now go down a little to Augustus, who forced the husband of Livia to repudiate her for his benefit, and took her to wife three months before the birth of a child by her first husband, or to his minister Mæcenas, who was as scandalous in his life as he was elegant in his taste, or to the profligate life of Julia, the emperor's daughter, and of so many other ladies of the house of the Cæsars, we shall find that family life grew worse instead of better, as the republic fell. There were indeed efforts made to effect a reform. Augustus, profligate himself, endeavored to alter morals by legislationfirst in the year 727 (B. C. 27), then in 736 (B. C. 18), by several laws, among which the lex Julia de adulteriis et de pudicitia may be mentioned, and finally in 762 (A. D. 9), by the lex Papid Poppaa. Of these laws, so far as they related to divorce, our space prohibits us from saying much, although they form an epoch in the Roman legislation concerning the family relations. Divorce was now subjected to certain formalities, being invalid if not declared before seven grown up Roman men and a freedman of the divorcing party. The man whose wife was caught in adultery or found guilty of it was obliged to put her away, on penalty of being held privy to the crime, and it was made incumbent on him to prosecute in such a case within sixty days, after which any other person might act as her accuser. A woman convicted of this crime was punished with relegation and a loss of a certain portion of her dower and of her goods. A freed woman marrying her patron could not take out a divorce without his consent. This legislation also settled more fully and minutely a principle already acted upon that in suits concerning dower after divorce the fault of the wife subjected her to a detention of a portion of the dower. This in the practice of Roman law seems to have been a most important matter, but its details do not belong here.

Angustus, and even that frightful wretch Tiberius, acted as legislators in the department of family morals. But morals grew worse and worse. He who is shocked by the developments of family life in the oration for Cluentius, or by such a character as Aurelia Orestilla, who, being reluctant to marry Cataline on account of a grown up son, consummated the union when the son was made way with,-he who is shocked by these earlier acts of wickedness will be more shocked by what Suetonius and that tragic historian Tacitus have to tell of life under the emperors. It was then that Seneca, a man better skilled in writing than in acting morally, could say that no woman was now ashained of divorce, since certain illustrious and noble ladies counted their years not by the number of consuls but of husbands. The moral disease had reached the vitals, and was incurable. As Rome rose to her greatness by severity of family life, so she fell into ruins by laxity just at that point.

Rome is a most interesting study for us Americans, because her vices, greed for gold, prodigality, a coarse material civilization, corruption in the family, as manifested by connubial unfaithfulness and by divorce, are increasing among us. We have got rid of one of her curses, slavery, and that is a great ground of hope for the future. But whether we are to be a thoroughly Christian nation, or to decay and lose our present political forms, depends upon our ability to keep family life pure and simple.*

* For divorce among the Romans, Wächter's work on that subject (Stuttgart, 1822), Rein's Privatrecht (Leipzig, 1836), Bekker-Marquardt's Roman Antiquities, part V. (Leipzig, 1861), and Rosbach's Roman Marriage, deserve, among many others, especial mention.

ARTICLE VI.—A ROMAN PHILOSOPHER.

THE" Catholic World," published at New York, is a monthly magazine of original and selected articles in the interest of the Roman Catholic Church. A friend has directed our attention to the latest number, and particularly to an essay entitled Philosophy of Conversion." The essay referred to is worth reading for several reasons; and we cannot but think that by giving some account of it, we may render a service to our readers and to the truth.

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Conversion, as the word is used by this philosopher, is not what we, who take the Bible as the rule of our faith, are wont to call by that name. It is not the turning of a sinner from his sins to God, but the turning of a Protestant from his supposed right of private judgment to believe implicitly whatever the Roman Catholic Church believes. Beginning with a reference to the notoriously numerous instances of transition from Anglicanism to Romanism, the writer affirms on the authority of "reliable statistics," that "within the last fifty years no less than forty-one clergymen of the American Episcopal Church alone have laid down the emoluments which they there enjoyed, and have espoused poverty and insignificance with the Catholic faith." Then admitting that he has no data by which to determine "how far the ranks of other Protestant sects hvae been invaded by God's converting grace," he illustrates the proficiency which he has made in the grace of credulity, by professing his own belief that the number of clerical converts from each of those other sects "will fall little short the number from the Episcopal "denomination." Whereupon he indulges in triumphal rhetoric about the multitudes of laymen, from all sects and denominations, and from none, who re constantly becoming good Roman Catholics. An editorial foot-note says: "Judging from the statistics of the past few years in the dioceses of New York, the number of converts in the United States must exceed 30,000."

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These exultations deserve to be considered. Whatever may

be said about some sweeping assertions in which the writer before us indulges his imagination, and exhibits the easiness with which he can believe without evidence, some facts in relation to the growth of Romanism in this country may be, reasonably enough, regarded with satisfaction and gratulation by intelligent Romanists. 1. The migration of foreigners into the United States has been for a long time, and will probably continue to be, more largely Roman Catholic than Protestant. A certain fatality, of misgovernment or something else, seems to afflict those countries of the old world in which the Roman hierarchy has a predominating influence with the people. Doubtless the philosopher whose essay is before us might explain the fact to his own edification if not to our satisfaction. We propose no explanation of the fact; we only refer to it as showing what is, and what must be expected. There is no great movement of population from one Roman Catholic country to another-none, for example, from Spain into Spanish America-none from Austria into Brazil. But Protestant Geneva is actually in danger of being romanized by immigra tion. The Roman Catholic Irish forsaking their own country, so blessed with the gifts of nature-so impoverished by human arrangements and influences swarm into over-populous England and Scotland, but not into Celtic and Catholic France, where the growth of population is hardly perceptible, and where the imperial government is ready to welcome any accession to the number of its conscribable subjects. They pour in a steady volume into this country, but not into Mexico; and so they will continue to come till Ireland shall be (we will not say Protestant, but) free and prosperous, or till the United States shall begin to be like Mexico. 2. Under the influence of American ideas and institutions, the Roman Catholic population in the United States is becoming intelligent and prosperous in proportion as it becomes a native population—that is, in proportion as the number of Roman Catholics born and educated here exceeds the number of those who, born and educated elsewhere, are Americans only by naturalization. 3. In proportion as the average of the Roman Catholic population, by intellectual and moral improvement, and by the prosperity consequent on industry and thrift, rises to a higher level in so

ciety, accessions to that sect from the various Protestant bodies, and from the large class of the simply irreligious or "Nothingarians," are of course increasingly numerous. 4. The Tractarian movement, here and in England, tends Rome-ward with a constant force. No Episcopalian who falls into that movement with a hearty acceptance of its principles, and who has any instinct of logical inconsistency, can find the catholicity of which he dreams till he finds it in the Roman Catholic communion. All these things considered, we can hardly wonder at the exultation in which our philosopher indulges himself by way of prelude to the philosophy of conversion.. The body with which he has connected himself is really making a good many proselytes in this country. He calls those proselytes "converts." Our Episcopalian friends, and some other Protestants, prefer to call them "perverts." The "perversion," when an Anglo-Catholic, having embraced all the Tractarian superstitions, and having practiced all the follies of extreme ritualism, has at last gone over to the Roman obedience, is not much of a "conversion." Whether we give it one name or the other, is of little consequence.

Yet it is worth remembering that the process of conversion or perversion works both ways. While Protestants, or those who might be counted as such in a census of the population, are continually received into the Roman communion, Roman Catholics, on the other hand, or persons of Roman Catholic parentage, are continually becoming Protestants. It may be doubtful on which side the balance falls in the account current of conversions and perversions; or there may be, as some think, no doubt at all. The obvious growth of the Roman power in this country might be accounted for, even if it were much greater than it is, by the natural increase of the Roman Catholic population, together with the great and constant additions to it by immigration. Our opinion is-and this is not a Protestant opinion only-that if all the children and descendants of Roman Catholics in our country, since the beginning of the century, had remained till now in communion with the Pope, and if in all that time no converts or perverts had been added to them, that portion of the American people would be far more numerous than it is to-day. We will even hazard