Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847

If we were to offer our own views as to a measure that might be safely adopted on this subject, we should be disposed to make the following suggestions for consideration: 1st, That registration should be necessary to validate irregular marriages, but should not constitute marriage; 2d, That the registrar should not attend at the contraction of any irregular marriage; 3d, That a certain period of public cohabitation, in the same residence, as married persons, should constitute or presume marriage; 4th, That, at least in reference to young females, marriage by promise and subsequent connexion should be valid, if steps to declare it were taken within a certain time; 5th, That the marriage of English parties under age should be subjected to some reasonable restraint by requiring prior residence of some duration.

In the mean time however, we trust the Bill will not receive the countenance of the Legislature. Minor amendments upon it may be proposed, but we do not expect that the principle can be corrected. It has been introduced, no doubt, with a laudable desire to obviate the uncertainty at present attending irregular marriages. But in mitigating that evil, it appears to us to involve others of a much more serious and sweeping kind, which it must be the duty of all religious and reflecting men who see the danger to use every exertion to avert.

1

Histoire Philosophique du Regne de Louis XV. Par M. Le Comte De Tocqueville. 2 Vols. Paris, 1847.

2

Histoire Philosophique du Regne de Louis XV.

3

The Duchess de Berri was an apt scholar in the lessons which her father taught her. One evening, after copious libations, a fancy seized them to represent the Judgment of Paris. The Princess played the part of Venus; two of the Regent's mistresses those of Minerva and Juno. "The three Goddesses appeared in the costume in which those in the tale displayed themselves to the son of Priam." De Tocqueville. Vol. i. p. 26—note.

4

Alluding to the sublime words of the Father Edgeworth to Louis XVI., at the foot of the scaffold:—"Fils de St Louis, montez au ciel!"

5

By the Pragmatic Sanction, promulgated during the first pregnancy of Christina, in May 1830.

6

"Relatives are known only together: the science of contraries is one. Subject and object, mind and matter, are known only in correlation and contrast, and in the same common act: which knowledge is at once a synthesis and an antithesis of both, and may be indifferently defined an antithetic synthesis and a synthetic antithesis of the terms. Every conception of self necessarily implies a conception of not self; every perception of what is different from me, implies a recognition of the percipient subject in contradistinction from the object perceived. In one object of knowledge, indeed, the object is the prominent element, in another the subject; but there is none in which either is known out of relation to the other. The immediate knowledge which Reid allows of things different from the mind, and the immediate knowledge of mind itself, cannot, therefore, be split into two distinct acts. In perception, as in other faculties, the same indivisible consciousness is conversant about both terms of the relation of knowledge."—Edinburgh Review, No. 103, p. 165.—A very able and elaborate paper, attributed to Sir William Hamilton.

7

Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy. Vol. iv., p. 209. In every way a remarkable work. Written with great vivacity and clearness, comprising a world of matter in the briefest possible space,—and, O reader, and O author, forgive the anticlimax!—at the least possible cost. In fact it forms part of the Series known as "Knight's Weekly Volume." To find a strictly original work of so much ability given to the world in this form, proves that the publisher and the man of letters are, in this mercantile age, second to none in the activity and enterprise with which they render their service to the public.

8

It is pretty generally known—even to those to whom it has not been granted to stand in the imposing presence of our fast friend and ancient ally, Monsieur Alexandre Dumas—that there is a slight tinge of black in the blood of that greatest of French romanciers, past, present, or to come. In connexion with the fact, we will cite an anecdote:—

A person more remarkable for inquisitiveness than for correct breeding—one of those who, devoid of delicacy and reckless of rebuffs, pry into every thing—took the liberty to question M. Dumas rather closely concerning his genealogical tree.

"You are a quadroon, M. Dumas?" he began.

"I am, sir," quietly replied Dumas, who has sense enough not to be ashamed of a descent he cannot conceal.

"And your father?"

"Was a mulatto."

"And your grandfather?"

"A negro," hastily answered the dramatist, whose patience was waning fast.

"And may I inquire what your great-grandfather was?"

"An ape, sir," thundered Dumas, with a fierceness that made his impertinent interrogator shrink into the smallest possible compass. "An ape, sir—my pedigree commences where yours terminates."

The father of Alexander Dumas, the republican general of the same name, was a mulatto, born in St Domingo, the son of a negress and of the white Marquis de la Pailleterie. By what legitimatizing process the bend sinister was erased, and the marquisate preserved, we have hitherto been unable to ascertain.

9

Procopius de Bello Vandalico, lib. i. c. 11. Gibbon (vol. vii. p. 161. note e) says that he could not find the Germania, a metropolis of Thrace, mentioned by Alemanni, in any civil or ecclesiastical lists of the provinces and cities. Alemanni's authority may be found in Notitiæ Græcorum Episcopatuum, where Germania is the sixty-seventh metropolitan see dependent on the Patriarch of Constantinople.—(Codinus de officiis Magnæ Ecclesiæ et Aulæ Constantinopolitanæ, p. 380, ed. Paris.) It is probable that the city Germane of the Edifices of Procopius (iv. 3) is the same as Germania. There was a fort in its territory, called Germas. De Ædif. iii. 4. Germanos is still a favourite ecclesiastical name with the Greeks. There is a place on the Gulf of Corinth, in the territory of Megara, with splendid remains of the military architecture of an ancient burgh, now called Porto Germano, the ancient Ægosthenæ.—(Leake's Travels in Northern Greece, vol. i. p. 405.) Herodotus mentions Germanii, Γερμανιοι, as an agricultural tribe of Persians in the time of Cyrus.—(Clio, 125.) These various Germans and Germanians can hardly be blood relations of our Germany or Deutschland.

10

Lord Mahon's Life of Belisarius, p. 3. Procopius de Bello Vand. ii. 6.

11

Procopius de Bello Persico, i. 12. Clinton's Fasti Romani. From this time Procopius was the official secretary of Belisarius.

12

A good soldier can only be formed from men between eighteen and forty years of age. In ancient times it required more strength to make a soldier than in modern. The demand for such men, in an improving state of society, makes them too valuable to be expended on the game of war, and hence despots in civilised ages are compelled to use an inferior class. Good troops must always be highly paid. A good heavy-armed soldier, in ancient Greece, had half the pay of his captain. The pay of the celebrated English archers, in the middle ages, was extremely high; as it required the service of a brave and vigorous yeomanry to give that corps the efficiency it displayed in so many hard-fought battles—(Hallam's Constitutional History of England, ch. ix. vol. 2.) Lord Brougham, however, overrates the pay of a mounted archer, in making it "equal to thirty shillings of our money" a-day.—(Political Philosophy, part iii. p. 237.)

13

Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vii. 166. It is impossible to resist transcribing Gibbon's note.

Νευρην μεν μαζω Πελασεν τοξω δε σιδηρον.

Λιγξε βιοϛ, νευρη δε μεγ ιαχεν αλτο δ'οιστοϛ.

Iliad, iv. 124-125

14

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, i. c. 18.

15

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, i. c. 21.

16

Ibid. 28-29.

17

This singular military manœuvre was repeated more than once by Roman generals, and shows how admirably the troops were drilled in what are called the degenerate days of the Roman armies.—(Finlay's Greece under the Romans, p. 246.)

18

The best edition of the works of Procopius is that published at Bonn in the new Corpus Scriptorum Byzantinæ Historiæ commenced under the auspices of Niebuhr. It is edited by W. Dindorff, and contains a corrected text with various readings, and a reprint of the notes of Alemanni on the Secret History. 3 vols. 8vo. 1833-8.

19

Procopius de Bello Vandalico, ii. c. 9.

20

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, ii. c. 28. Βασιλια τ*ϛ Εσπιριαϛ βελισαριοϛ α*ειπειν εγιωσαν

21

Life of Belisarius, p. 1.

22

Decline and Fall, vol. vii. 161.

23

Crassus was in the habit of saying, that no man was rich who could not maintain an army.

24

Procopius de Bello Gotthico, iii. 1.

25

Compare Procopius de Bello Gotthico, i. c. 25, with Anastasius de Vitis Pontificum Romanorum, p. 38, ed., Paris.

26

De Bello Gotthico, ii. c. 8.

27

Ibid. i. 22.

28

There is a touch of the malicious spirit of the Secret History in the narration of Procopius, caused probably by some in avoiding the stab aimed at him by Konstantinos. The whole scene could hardly fail to produce a profound impression on the coolest spectator, even in that age, when men were more accustomed to stabbing than in our delicate daysof gunshot wounds. Ὁ δε (Βελισἁριοϛ) καταπλαγειϛ ὁπισω τε ἁπἑστη και Βἱσσα ἱγγὑϛ του ἑστκατι περιπλακειϛ διαφυγειν ισχιοϛ —(De Bello Gotthico, ii. 8.) Bessas was as great an extortioner as Konstantinos. (See Ibid. iv. 13.)

29

Ildiger, doubtless a barbarian, from his name, was married to a daughter of Antonina by her first husband.—(De Bello Vandalico, ii. 8.) Valerian was also probably a barbarian, as he commanded a division of federate cavalry in the African war. He was general of the right wing of the Roman army under Narses at the battle of Taginas or Lentagio, which put an end to the life of the gallant Totila, and gave the mortal wound to the monarchy of the Ostrogoths.—(De Bello Gotthico, iv. 31.)

30

Procopius would lead us to believe that a fine of 300 lbs. of gold (upwards of £140,000 in specie, and twice that sum in value) extorted from Belisarius in 543, was the produce of his profits during the Asiatic campaigns of 541 and 542. But it is difficult to know what confidence ought to be placed in the details of the Secret History.—C. 4, p. 32, l. 1, ed. Bonn. Clinton's Fasti Romani, p. 780.

31

Anastasius, or the Memoirs of a Greek, by Thomas Hope, vol. ii. 393., first edition. The writer of these pages remembers reading Anastasius with singular pleasure, at the time of its publication. Now, after four-and-twenty years' intimate acquaintance with the East, and with the representatives of most of the classes of men depicted in the novel, he finds that its correctness of description and truth of character give it all the inexhaustible freshness of actual life.

32

Historia Arcana, c. 4. Tom. iii. p. 34, ed. Bonn.

33

Ibid, Tom. iii. p. 31.

34

De Bello Gotthico, iii. 35.

35

Agathias, lib. v. c. 6, p. 159, ed. Paris.—The conversion of royal guards into cheesemongers is by no means a very uncommon corruption. The dreaded janissaries degenerated into a corporation of hucksters and green-grocers. The Hellenic kingdom, founded as an incorporation of the spirit of anarchy and despotism, by the grace of the foreign secretaries of the three great powers of >Europe, possesses a more singular body of military than even the defunct Ottoman corps of green-grocers. It consists of officers without troops. Its inventor, Armansperg, the quintessence of Bavarian corruption in Greece, called it the Phalanx.

36

Agathias, v. ii. p. 161, ed. Paris.

37

The authentic history of the last events of the life of Belisarius must be gathered from Theophanes, p. 201, John Malalas, p. 239, and Cedrenus, p. 387. Though, perhaps, Cedrenus may be objected to as living too long after these events. Theophanes died in 817 at the age of 60. His chronography ends with the year 813. John Malalas lived in the ninth century. The chronicle of Cedrenus ends with the year 1057.

38

Pandects, xlvii. tit. 18. 1, s. 23.—Quæstioni fidem non semper, nec tamen nunquam habendum, constitutionibus declaratur; etenim res est fragilis, et periculosa, et quæ veritatem fallat.—Every one conversant with the social condition of the people of the East, (and probably it is the case under all despotic governments,) knows the extreme difficulty of obtaining judicial evidence that can be relied on, and the temptation judges incur to sanction torture. Hence the common assertion of public functionaries, that torture is absolutely necessary to secure the administration of justice; and of course people who require torture to persuade them to speak the truth, are unfit for self-government and constitutional liberty. Thus falsehood and oppression are perpetuated, and truth kept perpetually at bay.

39

Joannis Antiocheni cognomenti Malalæ Historia Chronica. Pars altera, p. 84, ed. Venet.

40

Theophanis Chronographia, p. 201, ed. Paris. The accounts of Theophanes and Malalas must be compared together, as the comparison establishes the fact that they were both drawn from official sources. See also p. 202, 203, and note.

41

Georgius Codinus de Originibus Constantinopolitanis, p. 54.

42

Georgii Cedreni Compendium Historiarum, p. 387.

43

Joannis Zonaræ Annales, tom. ii. p. 69. ed. Paris.

44

This may have resulted from the marriage of Joanna, the daughter of Belisarius, with Anastasius, the grandson of Theodora.—Procopii Arcana, c. 4, p. 34.

45

Leonis Grammatici Chronographia, p. 132. Bonnæ: 1842. 8vo.

46

Corpus Juris Civilis. Aliæ aliquot Constitutiones. Tom. ii. p. 511, ed. ster. 4to. Privilegium pro Titionibus ex Cujac. Obss. lib. x. c. 12. In a new edition of the Corpus there is the following note:—Hoc privilegium editum est in Cujac. Obss., sed ex quo fonte desumptum sit, non indicatur, nisi quod Cujacius a P. Galesio Hispano se id decepisse dicat. Non sine ratione addidit Beck. qui in App. Corp. Juris Civ. hanc constitutionem recepit, an genuina sit, dubio non carere.

47

Greece under the Romans, p. 229.—If the writer of this article may presume to refer to his own authority.

48

Imperium Orientale: studio A. Banduri. Tom. i. pars tertia. Antiquitatum Constantinopolitanarum, p. 7. ed. Paris.

49

Joannis Tzetzæ Historiarum Variarum Chiliades, p. 94, ed. Kiesslingii, Lipsiæ, 1826, 8vo.

50

Basil the Macedonian was originally a groom, and owed his first step in the imperial favour of the Drunkard to his powers as a whisperer. He broke an ungovernable horse belonging to the emperor, by the exercise of this singular quality, and rendered it, to the amazement of the whole court, as tame as a sheep. Leo Grammaticus says, Τη μεν μια χειρι τον χαλινον κρατησαϛ, τη δε 'ετιρα του ωτοϛ δραξαμενος εις εμ*ροτ*τα προβατου μεταβαλον. —P. 230, ed. Bonn.

51

Georgius Monachus, p. 540. Simeon Metaph. p. 449. Scriptores post Theophanem, ed. Paris. Leo Gramm., p. 469, ed. Paris, p. 247, ed. Bonn.

52

Things have not changed in our day. Capodistrias lighted his pipe with Canning's treaties and King Leopold's renunciation; and Colettis makes game of the feeble acts and strong expressions of Viscount Palmerston.

53

The Minstrelsy of the English Border; being a collection of Ballads, ancient, remodelled, and original, founded on well-known Border Legends. With illustrative notes by Frederick Sheldon. London: 1847.

A Book of Roxburghe Ballads. Edited by John Payne Collier, Esq. London: 1847.

A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood. Edited by John Mathew Gutch, F.S.A. 2 vols. London: 1847.

Poems and Songs of Allan Cunningham. London: 1847.

The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, Second Edition, Enlarged. Glasgow: 1847.

54

We are indebted for the above extract to the Homeric Ballads, published some years since in Fraser's Magazine. We hope that some day these admirable translations may be collected together and published in a separate form.