4 DECEMBER 1886, Page 3

We have elsewhere animadverted on the place which sensa- tional

trials are beginning to fill in our social system. This week, London has been flooded with suggestive reports of the divorce snit instituted by Lord Colin Campbell against his wife, which are making the newspapers sell like wildfire. The attraction of nastiness appears to be all the greater because the English, as compared with most peoples, keep their literature clean. We cannot of course, as yet, remark on the case ; but we suppose it is lawful to remark on the intolerable length to which the proceed- ings may be protracted. We have not noticed much irrelevant evidence-in-chief; but some of the greatest counsel in the country are occupying days in cross-examining servant-girls and footmen chiefly as to the accuracy of their memory for dates. If that is necessary, we have nothing to say ; but we can see no reason why, ander such a system, the trial should not last till Parliament meets, or why, indeed, it should ever end. This much is certain,—that if the parties were nobodies, the pro- ceedings would not last a week ; and that if they were poor, they would be divorced or rebound in about two days. As it is, Europe, which manages such affairs through duels, looks on astounded at the British curiosity about all dirty linen, if only it is marked with aristocratic names.