WIFE-BEATING.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—" I would rather," in the "Fortunes of Nigel," says Richie Moniplies, when George Heriot was for saving him from his master's wrath, "1 would rather stand by a lick from his baton, than it suld e'er be said a stranger came between us." May I commend the consideration of that sentiment to the lady who, in last week's Spectator, expressed her horror at English gentlemen's non-intervention between man and wife ?
"What sort of a lion do you mean to be, if you should turn into one?"—" Die mihi, si fias tu leo, qualis ens?" Yet, Martial notwithstanding, I make bold to believe that if ever I should turn into a wife, I shall choose to be beaten by my husband to any extent (short of being slain outright), rather than " it suld e'er be said a stranger came between us."
As to an Englishman's "religion," it sets no limits either to the wife's obedience or to the husband's devotion and self-sacrifice. "As the Church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything." "That this man may love his wife, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it." What Christ is to the Church, what the Church is to Christ,— such are the English Prayer-book's ideals for relations matri- monial.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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