conjugal affections, or any other incidental occurrence, may not be the first symptom of an impending divorce. Among Christians every married man knows that he can neither add a wife to the one he has, nor exchange her for another, as the Muslims can; and therefore his relation to the female sex in general assumes much of the purity and sacredness of the relationship between brothers and sisters, so that he can have social intercourse with womankind in general, and benefit by their keener observation, their kindlier sympathy, their more refined manners and tastes, with almost the same propriety and freedom he enjoys in conversing with his sisters or with individuals of his own sex. Every married Muhammadan, on the other hand, knows that the fact of his having a wife by no means precludes the possibility of his courting and marrying another, either in addition to the one he has, or after having sent her away. Every Muslim is also aware that the fact of a woman being married does not absolutely prevent her from becoming his wife; for it is possible that he may induce her husband, either by bribery or intimidation, to divorce her; or, the married woman herself; if bent on getting free from her husband, so annoy and irritate him as to bring about a divorce, enabling her to become another man's wife. As every Muhammadan husband and wife are led by their religion to look upon the tie of matrimony as not binding till death, but merely till it is found

convenient and pleasant to dissolve it, the fact of being married does not debar a Musalman from seeking another wife, perhaps even amongst those who are already provided with a husband, but who may be rendered eligible by means of divorce; nor does it prevent a Muslim woman from seeking to win the affections of another man, in the hope that a divorce may enable her to become his wife. The consequence of this is, that in order to save matrimony from becoming practically altogether useless, and sinking down to the level of lawless concubinage, the custom has become necessary among the Muhammadans of most rigidly separating even the married portion of the two sexes, and completely preventing any friendly intercourse between them, so that general society has altogether ceased to consist of men and women, as God originally designed it, and as it still is among Christians, and has been reduced to a company of men only, whilst the poor women are kept shut up in harems, and not permitted to appear out of doors without carefully hiding their faces. This unnatural exclusion of the female sex from society, rendered necessary by the unlimited license of divorce, cannot but prove a great evil, inasmuch as if deprives the society of men not only of a highly agreeable, but also of a most refining element, and inasmuch as it confines one half, and this the more sociable half, of mankind to the bleak monotony of harem-life, cruelly debarring them from