passed over hitherto, and we hope will not escape the attention of the Commissioners on Divorce, whose report, we believe, is not yet made public. These are Impotency and Lunacy.

Impotency has the effect of making a marriage voidable. Lunacy, or want of reason, is deemed to be a legal incapacity so as to render the continuance of the matrimonial contract invalid. And by 51 Geo. III. c. 37., the marriage of any person proved lunatic by inquisition under the Great Seal, or of any lunatic, whose person and estate have been committed to the care of particular trustees by any Act of Parliament, is declared, before the lunatic be declared of sane mind by the Lord Chancellor, to be null and void. if the impotency or lunacy succeed the union, it remains as a chain which cannot be loosened. We wish that the Commissioners would consider the hardship of a modern event. A young woman is allied to a husband in full health, but he is attacked with fever after the ceremony, and his case becomes one of settled mental derangement. A visitation of impotency may arise to frustrate the happiness of the wife, even to hurry her to the grave in obedience to the laws of virtue and of her country. Although we are not servile admirers much less imitators of the Civil Law, we may take a lesson from it upon the happening of these painful calamities. It allows a divorce, and we ought also, in conformity to common sense, to give the difficulty a just consideration.

Whether the husband or the wife be the subject of lunacy, the children, if there be any, must be guarded with anxious solicitude, and aided with an ample provision. In the other case, the dilemma of children is absent, but, either way, the impotency must be ascertained to be hopeless, and the lunacy incurable. Whether upon such trying and not unfrequent exposures, a second marriage might be suffered without destroying the vinculum of the first, might be a point for argument. We offer no opinion. It is hard when adverse fortune compels the less prosperous of our race to single solitude, but harder still when premature disease or sudden infirmity, forbid to the desolate spouse "that Nature's great

command should be obeyed." One of our best painters of nature has blamed

"The coarser tie of human laws,

Unnatural oft', and foreign to the mind."

But we retire from a theme which our authors have not provoked, but which is alien to the subject of divorce, and has by no means escaped comment from the modern press. The closing advice of Mr. Davis' is applicable to all amendments of the laws which we have discussed. "Every provision must have the test of practical experience, and an opportunity be given for remedying unforseen difficulties and omissions before the legislator can withdraw his watchful care and anxiety, or consider his task completed. When his part is fulfilled, it remains for the executive, backed by the cordial co-operation of the well-affected portion of mankind, to effect the rest." Mrs. Norton ends more poetically:--"Let my part in this be only as a vision borne by the wind, a cry coming over the waves from a shipwreck, when you stand upon the shore, and which you turn and listen to, not for the sake of those who call — you do not know them

but because it is a cry for HELP." We are quite aware of Mr. Bowyer's Bill for altering the Law of Criminal Conversation. But it is by no means certain that it will pass. We think that it would be better to refrain in Committee, should the Bill reach that stage, from inserting any provision to authorise an Indictment. Perhaps a moderate fine might be permitted. But if the Court should be invested with this power, the act will be a law for the rich. And if magistrates should be enabled to impose it, there will be a frequent and unseemly exhibition of indecency before an uneducated multitude. An Indictment can hardly be acceptable, unless a divorce be appended, ex vi termini, to a verdict of Guilty. For an imprisoned husband or wife can hardly be an acceptable partner for the future. . . . We had rather pronounce for a temporary or other divorce, as we have intimated in this article (p. 29).

ART. II.-M. FELIX.

It is now more than a year since the cause of comparative jurisprudence lost one of her most zealous adherents in M. Felix. Jean Jacques Gaspard Fœlix was born at Oberstein, in the electorate of Tréves, June 3. 1791. This country belonged at his birth to Prussia, was afterwards ceded to France, and included in the department of the Sarve, but restored to Prussia after the events of 1814. The father of of M. Fœlix was a counsellor of the Royal Court of Cologne. Young Felix received his legal education at the Faculty of Coblentz, one of the twelve Faculties of Law instituted by the decree of the fourth complimentary day in the year 12. Having completed his legal education, and commenced practice as an avocat avoué, at Coblentz, in 1814, Fœlix found himself amidst a host of difficulties arising from the complication of laws in the Rhenish provinces, viz, the French Code (remaining still in force), the German Common Law, and lastly, the special laws governing the adjoining parts of the Germanic Confederation. In consequence of this an impulse for comparative legislation arose in the mind of M. Fœlix, which continued ever after to be the leading feature in his character. And when, after some time, his labours had produced some fruit, the idea occurred to him to transfer his quarters to Paris where, little or no attention being given to this branch of study, a wide and almost untraversed field lay before him, in which he, afterwards the guide of so many, advanced with slow but steady step.

In the month of June 1826 he put this project into execution. Three years later, in March 1829, he obtained letters of naturalisation, and on the first of May was enrolled as an Avocat of the Cour Royale at Paris.

Far, however, from giving up the study of comparative

1 They consisted of the nine faculties of France, besides those of Brussels, Coblentz, and Turin.

legislation, he only embraced it with more ardour; and although necessarily obliged to give up the greatest portion of his time to general business and consultations, yet he seems even from the first moment of his residence in Paris to have commenced that series of publications which have insured him so distinguished a name in the science of law.

It would be impossible to mention in detail all that he published in the form of pamphlets or articles in public journals, we shall therefore confine ourselves to the works properly so called, -Code Forestien annoté, 2 vols. 8vo., Paris 1827; Traité des Rentes Foncières, 1 vol. 8vo., Paris 1828; Commentaire de la Loi sur la Contrainte par Corps, 17 Avril 1832, 1 vol. 8vo., Paris 1832; Traité du Droit International privé ou du Conflit des Lois de differentes Nations en Matière de Droit privé, 1 vol. 8vo., Paris 1843–7.1 All these bear the mark of conscientious labour. M. Fœlix not only made an imperishable work, but gave it that indescribable neatness of "finish" which only a which only a practised workman can do. Legislative, judicial, and every description of document bearing upon the point in discussion are collected with the greatest care. Perhaps his best work and the one which is also best known, is his treatise on private international law, which alone would have sufficed to place his fame on an enduring basis.

Throughout Europe, and, we may add, in America, this book is quoted with eulogium, and recognised as a standard authority upon this point. It brought its author high praise from many learned bodies and foreign princes.

M. Fœlix alone, perhaps, in France, could have written a work to realise the plan of which required a vast collection of documents upon foreign law and jurisprudence, continual correspondence with the most celebrated jurists in Europe and America, and considerable knowledge of living languages, all of which M. Felix possessed. Combined with all these advantages he had an indomitable zeal for labour, which will account for the quantity of information that the treatise upon international law contains, both upon the complication of

1 M. Fœlix has left in manuscript a translation and continuation of De Marten's Resumé de l'Histoire des Traités de Paix.

civil laws in different countries and the rights to be allowed to each, according to the individual and the object.

Notwithstanding the title of the work, which refers only to private law, all the latter part treats of international criminal law. The second edition, published in 1847, was dedicated to M. Salvandy, then Minister of Public Instruction and well worthy of this homage, from his zeal and ardour in encouraging useful works, and in protecting men of merit. Another work, also one of European fame, was the monthly review set on foot by M. Fœlix in 1833, under the name of Revue Etrangère de Législation et d'Economie Politique. This publication was carried on for about seventeen years, and only ceased in 1850, in consequence of the death of M. Joubert the able editor, combined with other difficulties. This vast collection of interesting papers, consisting of sixteen thick volumes in 8vo. of 800 or 1000 pages, and to which a great number of the most eminent French and foreign jurists contributed, contains a most valuable collection of documents upon the state of legislation and the changes of the science of law, both in Europe and America. Not only are the laws and jurisprudence in force in foreign countries there enumerated, either generally or in detail, but no design, either of a code or important project of law is forgotten. Their analysis and contents are clearly explained either by M. Fœlix, or some other writer specially qualified to render the most exact account. An analogous work, quite as good, but much more brief in its details, and analytical rather than critical, treats of the new works on foreign law. For seven years M. Fœlix, with the assistance of several friends', conducted this review, corresponding with learned men of all countries interested in this. matter, editing himself the articles for each number, and, in short, taking upon himself the correction of proof sheets and all the other cares which devolve upon an editor. Confined as it was to foreign law and law reform, we can understand that the readers of the review were more select than numerous, especially in France where, as in England, legal

1 Particularly by that of M. West, since counsel to the Prefecture.