IO6 THE LAPSE OF TIME. 



from under a single roof, the children went forth, 

 spreading over all lands, not only miraculously for- 

 getting the common ancestral language, but forgetting 

 the arts, the traditions, the sentiments, which they had 

 in common, retrograding in some cases into a savage 

 ferocity or an almost imbecile simplicity, in others re- 

 taining or developing forms of an advanced civilization. 

 Esquimaux and Hottentots, Japanese and Red Indians, 

 the Negro and the Greek, are thus united in ties of 

 cousinship by no means remote. Arts, monuments, and 

 modes of life essentially different in spirit and character 

 are supposed, within these narrow bounds of time, to 

 have sprung up ; nor only to have sprung up, but to have 

 passed away, leaving only a few faint vestiges to recall 

 the artists, the heroes, the lawgivers, the national tem- 

 per, the genius of the time, whereunto they owed their 

 existence. It must surely be allowed that marriage 

 customs change with slow reluctance ; an alteration of 

 the sentiment with which women are regarded is not 

 easily or quickly produced. Yet on no subject are the 

 practices and opinions of mankind more widely diver- 

 sified. One wife to one husband is in some places the 

 rule ; but in others, one husband to many wives, one wife 

 to many husbands, or husbands and wives without any 

 special appropriation, which some societies consider a 

 selfish infringement of the general right. According 

 to the customs of different nations, wives must be fought 

 for, or stolen, or purchased, or caught in a race, or wooed 

 and won with pin-money and other endearments. Ac- 

 cording to the feeling of different races, the wife is a 



