ADOPTED CHILDREN. THERE is a certain absurdity in the story
which was going the
- round last week of the lady who asked a Board of Guardians for "a -child only two years old, with blue eyes, and light hair, and a complete orphan." One felt that the demand had been dictated rather by sentiment than by genuine kindliness, that the child was selected on the same principles as a doll might have been, but the anecdote indicated a curious deficiency in our law. The practice of adoption, so frequent in the Roman and the modern Asiatic world, allowed by all German laws and sanctioned by the Code Napoleon, has never received in England any kind of legal recog- nition. It is not opposed to our manners, is rather approved by opinion, and is among the philanthropic an incident of very fre- quent occurrence, but the law takes no notice of it, provides no ceremonial for recording it, and imposes no obli;ations upon those who attempt it. Yet it would be difficult to suggest a practice which might be productive of more general benefit to a society which like our own is unfavourable to marriage, which throws the time further and further back in every generation, and which allows in the-same family excessive inequalities of fortune. There are thousands of old maids among us, well-to-do and excellent, to whom the privilege would bring a new zest to their lives, new interests, and new occupation, thousands of widowers whose lives are passed in a sort of unwilling solitude, thousands of married homes where the only thing wanting to life is the sound of childrene voices. There seems no reason, natural or artificial, why a void due chiefly to the action of an imperfect social system should not by that system be filled up. Adoption of a kind is indeed already much more frequent than the public imagine. Let any one of our readers look round his acquain twice, and he will find cases where children left unprovided for have been brought-up by rela- tions, friends, and even strangers, with a kindness which makes their circle at last almost forget that the children are not their own. Indeed the complete success of such arrangements sometimes sug- gests a doubt whether natural feeling" is quite so strong an instinct as it is the fashion to assume, whether it is not the rela- tionship of intercourse which begets family affection rather than that of blood, whether a child does not love its mother as much from its reliance upon her as from any natural instinct beyond its own control. Children love nurses more than their mothers very often indeed, and the poetry thrown by all races round the relation of foster-mother has a justification in fact. Fre- quent as the incident is, however, the law throws difficulties in the way of a very positive kind. The adopted child, for example, does not inherit unless through a relationship other than the adop- tion, which very seldom exists. The tendency is of course to adopt relatives, but they will as often be the wife's as the husband's, and in that case the legacy duties are as heavy as if the adopted were utter strangers. So with the most just and expedient of all forms of adoption--the recognition of a man's illegitimate child, which though provided for in every other country of Europe, even in Cal- vinistic Scotland, is in England left without any legal sanction whatever. The legacy difficulty may be met by settlements, but peo- ple are unwilling to settle moveable property even on their own chil- dren,—it impairs too much the pleasant sense of possession and of choice. A still more serious impediment is the difficulty or rather impossibility of terminating the rights of the real parents. The natural parents can always reclaim their offspring, at least up to the age of discretion, and we know of a case where that power was used to hold a perpetual menace over a family who would have saciificed for their adopted children as much as for their own. The lady who asked for a " complete orphan " probably dreaded contact with vulgar or evil relatives, but the fear that all care may be thrown away by a sudden demand for the child's restoration greatly diminishes the practice. The sense of permanence is the basis of all sound relationships, and the objections which apply to divorce for incompatibility are almost as operative against the right of breaking up a household once formed by adoption.
laborious walks of life. The father never changed his views, but in the process of years he almost forgot that his heir was not his MISS HELEN FAUCIrS IMOGEN.
The relation in such -cases when stripped of sentiments with which legislatures can have nothing to do is one of contract, and And no doubt the pleasure in what we may call made as obligatory as any other. Suppose a man who has risen in life thinks it a kindly thing to adopt one of his less successful disturbing realities,—in the acting which remembers that man brother's or friend's ten children, and the parents are gratefully is "the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals," much better willing, why should not that process be legalized, the child in- than it remembers the "quintessence of dust "in which that beauty Tested by formal registration before the regular officer with every is embodied,—or at least which seldom remembers the two together, legal right possessed by a son or daughter, enabled to inherit, giving us sentiment whether evil or good without that distracting entitled to the adopter's name, and aided by just the same limited play of contradictory agencies which real life shows,—no doubt the -claims to maintenance? One exception, the right of primo- pleasure in acting of this kind was one form of that eager uncritical geniture, which is mixed up inextricably with aristocratic feeling, enthusiasm which indulged itself in shaping the future to its liking it might be well to allow, and we should be doubtful of the more than in scanning the medley of the present. The tide has possibility of including adopted relatives within the forbidden now long turned the other way. M. Fechter, the greatest of our degrees. Hindoo society has done that successfully, reccg_ modern actors, is great chiefly because he can give the easy, light, nizing absolutely no distinction whatever of any sort between the self-contained air of modern society to great characters such as adopted and begotten child, and the Code Napoleon makes this a Hamlet, Iago, and Othello, without robbing them of their ideal cardinal point in the arrangement, but in England artificial limi- force. In comedy Mr. Sothern's success is due to a precisely tab:0ns always provoke a disposition to disregard them. But with similar power. The public taste loves such critical satire on itself those two drawbacks adoption might be made complete with, we and the modern condition of things as he has given us in Lord believe, the happiest effects. Opinion in England is always affected Dundreary, and indeed in almost all his best efforts : and all the by law, and the practice would become in a very short time an pieces which have had the most decided success have, like the accepted mode of relieving poor relations, the natural refuge from "Ticket of Leave," had a basis in the social condition of the day. aolitary life for the childless and the unmarried. The change therefore from the modern school to Miss Faucit's wation, one being that its tendency is to diminish marriage. If play of Shakespeare's in which is leas room for the modern men and women are to enjoy the comfort of children in their old realism than " Cymbeline." There is little or no character in it. age without marriage they will, it is said, cease- to marry. That Imogen herself, one of the airiest and least outlined of his ex- notion is at the bottom of the restriction imposed by German laws quisite "dreams of fair women," being the only exception. as to the age of the adopters, but the argument is exceedingly specu- lachimo is a rough clay model for lago, so rough that the genius dative. The hope of children is possibly one incentive to marriage, of the sculptor is quite invisible. Poathumus is almost a lay though it does not weigh half so heavily as the hope of a pleasant figure, to which such art as Mr. Fechter's might perhaps, but companion, but it will exist just as strongly whatever laws we may only perhaps, give a semblance of reality. Cloten is the best make. People, to put the matter colloquially, are not very likely of the subordinate sketches ; for in him the silly and the evil to burden themselves with other folks' children while they have qualities are not unskilfully blended. Cymbeline himself, his hope of their own, or if they do it is under circumstances where wife and sons, and the old lord who stole them in their in. -adoption of one sort or another is inevitable, and the law would fancy from revenge, are mere necesfities of a very unnatural simply afford a means of legalizing the relation. A man in modern plot. So that in fact the whole interest of the play depends Europe is pretty much compelled to " adopt " his nephews and on Imogen, who is a vague though exquisitely beautiful imper- cieces if there is no other provision for them, and the new system sonation of a young wife's innocent love. Probably no part ever merely enables him, if he chooses, to do his duty a little more suited Miss Faucit better, nor has she lost anything, except in effectually. The only circumstances under which it could check youth, of the qualities needful for a representation of it. Her marriage would be adoption by an unmarried woman who might movements are as graceful as ever, perhaps more graceful than subsequently marry, but she would, after all, be only in the ever. Her voice is sweet and full, perhaps too full, of tenderness. position of a widow, and we may rely very confidently on the The purely ideal passages,—the poetry as distinguished from the spinster's instinct notto throw wilful obstacles in her own way. personation of the part,—she gives with perfect melody and taste. The other objection is the impediment which the practice would Nothing could be more graceful, for instance, than her delivery of throw in the way of the inheritance of collaterals, an objection the beautiful passage in which Imogen complains of the interrup- which would in this country have, we suspect, a secret weight. tion of her parting with Posthumus,—
Collateral it must, however, be remembered have no natural claim, I could and some of the ablest thinkers would leave them no legal one. The Between two charming words, comes in my father, nephew or cousin thrown out by adoption would be just as much And like the tyrannous breathing of the North,
thrown out by marriage, and is neither more nor less liable to be Shaies all our buds from growing."
thrown out by will. In countries where intestacy is the rule or the But WES Faucit is, as she always was, a pure idealist in style. practice there might be some hardship in altering the principle of Her effort is not so mach so to present Shakespeare as to make succession by allowing adoption, but in England the right of bequest you for the moment conceive the event and understand how it is very nearly absolute and the practice of making wills all but uni- happened, as to extract the fullest beauty and deepest sentiment versal. The collateral heir might as well be enabled to resist his rela, from the situation. Accordingly, to our minds, instead of ren- tive's marriage or bring an action of wastry as to resist a legal form dering Imogen more real she renders her somewhat less so. in- of adoption which in an unrecognized form he cannot even as the law stead of giving such a play to her countenance and manner as
With regard to the children themselves the case is still harder. stands prevent. Of course in the unusual and unlikely ease of We have mentioned the oppressive incidence of the legacy duty, children born to the house after adoption the adopted must rank but we know a case where a lad was adopted by a wealthy solicitor as youngest, but except in that single contingettcy there is no real and deliberately educated to become a country gentleman, had an disturbance of the natural order of succession, assuming, that is, the excellent training, but one which left him unfit for any of the more large assumption that there is a natural order at all.
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