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year was about one-third the total number of persons divorcing, which is probably a rate not widely different from that of widows and widowers of the same age. Foreign figures for Switzerland, Holland, and Berlin indicate that in those regions the proportion of the divorced who remarry speedily is about the same as that of widows and widowers. What evidence there is on the subject therefore tends to discredit this popular opinion. The evidence on the second point is more conclusive, and has gone far towards decreasing the demand for a constitutional amendment allowing a federal marriage and divorce law. About four-fifths of all the divorces granted in the United States were issued to parties who were married in the state in which the decree was later made; and when from the remaining one-fifth are deducted those in which the parties migrated for other reasons than a desire to obtain ail easy divorce, the remainder would constitute a very small, almost a negligible, fraction of the total number. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say how far the frequency of divorce in the United States has been or is a social injury; how far it has weakened or undermined the ideal of marriage as a lifelong union between man and woman. In this respect the question is very like that of illegitimacy; and as the most careful students of the latter subject agree that almost no trustworthy inference regarding the moral condition of a community can be derived from the proportion of illegitimate children born, so one may say regarding the prevalence of divorce that from this fact almost no inferences are warranted regarding the moral or social condition of the population. It is by no means impossible, for example, that the spread of divorce among the negro population in the South marks a step in advance from the condition of largely unregulated and illegal unions characteristic of the race immediately after the war. The prevalence of divorce in the United States among the native population, in urban communities, among the New England element, in the middle classes of society, and among those of the Protestant faith, indicates how closely this social phenomenon is interlaced with much that is characteristic and valuable in American civilization. In this respect, too, the United States perhaps represent the outcome of a tendency which has been at work in Europe at least since the Reformation. Certainly the divorce-rate is increasing in nearly every civilized country. Decrees of nullity of marriage and decrees of separation not absolutely terminating the marriage relation are relatively far less prevalent than they were in the mediaeval and early modern period, and many persons who under former conditions would have obtained relief from unsatisfactory unions through one or the other of these avenues now resort to divorce. The increasing proportion of the community who have an income sufficient to pay the requisite legal fees is also a factor of great importance. The belief in the family as an institution ordained of God, decreed to continue “till death us do part,” and in its relations typifying and perpetuating many holy religious ideas, probably became weakened in the United States during the 19th century, along with a weakening of other religious conceptions; and it is yet to be determined whether a substitute for these ideas can be developed under the guidance of the motive of social utility or individual desire. In this respect the United States is, as Mr Gladstone once wrote, a tribus prcerogativa, .but one who knows anything of the family and home life of America will not readily despond of the outcome. Bibliography.—The only important source of statistical information is the governmental report of over 1000 octavo pages, A Report on Marriage and Divorce in the United States, 1867 to
1886, including an Appendix relating to Marriage and Divorce in Certain Countries of Europe, by Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labour. The student may perhaps obtain a copy by applying to the Commissioner of Labour. The statistics contained in this volume have been analysed and interpreted in W. F. Willcox’s The Divorce Problem: A Study in Statistics, published by Columbia University, New York City, in 1891 and again in 1897. Further interpretations are contained in an article in the Political Science Quarterly for March 1893, entitled “A Study in Vital Statistics.” The best legal treatise is probably Bishop on Marriage, Divorce, and Judicial Separation. -yv.) DiX, John Adams (1798-1879), American soldier and politician, was born at Boscawen, N.H., and died in New York City, 21st April 1879. His early training was military, and as a boy he participated in the war of 1812. Afterwards he studied law and was admitted to the Bar. In 1830 he became adjutant-general of New York, and was soon one of the Democratic managers of the State. From 1845 to 1849 he was a United States senator of New York. In May 1860 he became postmaster of New York City, and from 10th January until 5th March 1861 he was Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. He rendered important services in hurrying forward troops in 1861, and was appointed major-general of volunteers. In 1872 he was elected governor of New York as a Republican by a large majority, but was defeated for re-election. He had great energy and administrative ability, and became president of the Mississippi and Missouri Railway in 1853, and was first president of the Union Pacific Railway, 1863-1868. DiXOn, capital of Lee county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the Rock river, at an altitude of 725 feet. Its site is level and its street plan regular. It is at the intersection of branches of the Chicago and North-Western and the Illinois Central Railways. Population (1880), 3658; (1890), 5161; (1900), 7917, of whom 879 were foreign-born and 59 negroes. Dixon, Richard Watson (1833-1900), English poet and divine, son of Dr James Dixon, a wellknown Wesleyan minister, was born 5th May 1833. He was educated at King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and on proceeding to Pembroke College, Oxford, became one of the famous “ Birmingham group ” there, who shared with William Morris and Burne-Jones in the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He only took a second class in Moderations in 1854, and a third in Literce Humaniores in 1856 ; but in 1858 he won the Arnold Prize for an historical essay, and ‘in 1863 the English Sacred Poem Prize. He was ordained in 1858, wTas second master of Carlisle High School, 1863-1868, and successively vicar of Hayton, Cumberland, and Warkworth, Northumberland. He became Honorary Canon of Carlisle in 1874, and died at Warkworth, 23rd January 1900. Canon Dixon’s first two volumes of verse, Christ’s Company and Historical Odes, were published in 1861 and 1863 respectively; but it was not until 1883 that he attracted conspicuous notice with Mano, an historical poem in terza rima, which was enthusiastically praised by Mr Swinburne. This success he followed up by three privately printed volumes, Odes and Eclogues, 1884, Lyrical Poems, 1886, and The Story of Eudocia, 1888. Dixon’s poems were during the last fifteen years of his life recognized as scholarly and refined exercises, touched with both dignity and a certain severe beauty, but he never attained any general popularity as a poet. The appeal of his poetry is addressed directly to the scholar and the man of erudition. A great student of history, his studies in that direction colour much of his poetry. He is at his best in poetic narrative, where he combines fancy and fact with much skill and grace. The romantic atmosphere is remarkably preserved in Mano, which is also a highly successful metrical exercise in the difficult terza rima. His typical
